“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something is more important than fear.”

“The fact is, I love him. He's the boy I want and one day he'll be MINE.”

“Cal: Yesterday I was stuck in a car with you for eight hours. Bastard. I didnt even sing along with the radio. Much.Me: Yeah. And? Cal: Something happened.Me: If youre referring to my driving skill...”

“Cal: Im not presuming. I know exactly what you think about me. You think Im an anal-retentive Armrest Nazi . . . an arrogant Modelizer. You cant stand the way I talk, any of the subjects I choose t...”

“Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one else will like it either.”

“But mom's been depressed ever since her last boyfriend turned out to be a Republican.”

“I should never be left alone with my mind for too long.”

“...we have, each of us, a story that is uniquely ours, a narrative arc that we can walk with purpose once we figure out what it is. It's the opposite to living our lives episodically, where each da...”

“New York always feels more like my hometown than the places where I actually grew up (which weren't far from New York), perhaps because I did my artistic "growing up" while working in this crazy, w...”

“I tell Esther she should ease up on lard. There's no need to mix lard in with Scottie's rice, chicken, and beans. I tell her she hasn't read the blogs. I've read the blogs. I know what Scottie shou...”

“I've got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don't want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I'd rather th...”

“We are a generation that is obsessed with nostalgia. Everything from the past is so readily available in ways that it never was before and because of that, western civilization will experience a pe...”

“To write is to stand at the edge of a bottomless well, unafraid of falling in.”

“But when I say it isn't meant for anyone's eyes, I don't mean it in the sense of one of those novel manuscripts people keep in a drawer, insisting they don't care if anyone else ever reads it or no...”

“So here I am writing my zombie story and my lead character decides to betray me.”