I keep one simple rule that I only move in one direction - I write the book straight through from beginning to end. By following time's arrow I keep myself sane.

I try not to become too regular an addict of any one subculture.

I never take any notes or draw charts or make elaborate diagrams, but I hold an image of the shape of a book in my head and work from that mental hologram.

I've never related to the work geek at all-it sounds much more horrible than nerd. Like a freak biting a chicken's head off in a sideshow.

I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me.

Someday I would change my name to Shut Up and save everybody a lot of time.

I work on a laptop specifically so I can work in cafes and pretend I'm part of the human world.

What age is a black boy when he learns he's scary?

It was only as I wrote about fear that I began to find paths of access to feelings that were intolerable to me then.

I want what we all want," said Carl. "To move certain parts of the interior of myself into the exterior world, to see if they can be embraced.

I can't bear the silent ringing in my skull.

I never trust frank and simple people whose stories hold together.

My kiss is my promise written in my heart with color of your love.

Oh, my love, ' she said. 'What do the only children do?''We'll never have to know.

I have that hypocrisy of a parent in that I'm like, 'Come on, you've got to toughen up at the same time let me take care of that for you.

The reason you have to say "Trust me" is that you haven't earned it and are forced to ask for it - BAD MOVE.

I still have very close ties to Houston and the Astros because that was my first team.

Success made me self-sufficient, but it also took away my anonymity. I'm just this quiet nobody, and all of a sudden people are nervous around me. That was kind of weird.

I'm the LCL - the Last Center Left. I've been doing the same things for 13 years, but now they're flopping and falling, and the refs are falling for it, too.

Trust Emmett to find the joke in the destruction of my life.

I am not the man I once was. I do not want to go back in time, to be the second son, the second man.