I know very few writers who outline fully before they start. It just doesn't seem possible to do, because so many things don't come out until you're absolutely knee-deep in the world.

Maybe that's what we look for in the people we love, the spark of unhappiness we think we know how to extinguish.

When things don't go well, it helps to think of yourself as a genius and the rest of the world as a bunch of idiots.

Every minute we were together, I felt like I was wandering in the dark through a strange house, groping for a light switch. And then, whenever I found one and turned it on, the bulb was dead.

Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.

I read 'The Great Gatsby' in high school and was hypnotized by the beauty of the sentences and moved by the story about the irrevocability of lost love.

Once you'd broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you were connected forever, whether you liked it or not.

It just took some people a little longer than others to realize how few words they needed to get by, how much of life they could negotiate in silence.

Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.

I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.

He made me think of all the books I hadn't read, and all the ones I'd read but hadn't fully understood.

These days, it's better to look poor and be safe, than look rich and be a victim.

Every invention began as an imagination.

The process of growth is obviously critical to my understanding of the land and myself. So the process is far more unpredictable with far more compromises with the day, the weather, the material.

Well, I was obsessed with Judy Garland growing up. Like, obsessed.

College. I didn't even realize it was carefree at the time, but looking back, that was the most carefree time ever.

In my brief glimpse of what is to come I realize how little I care to witness it. I have seen the future and I'm fairly relieved to say, it looks nothing like me.

I'm at the National Theatre School, which is like the Juilliard of Canada.

Through my satire I make little people so big that afterwards they are worthy objects of my satire and no one can reproach me any longer.

The one religion is beyond all speech.

Hot air expands, and seriously pompous attitude is the inflation of choice by those lacking substance.