I wonder..., " she said, "if there was such a thing as time machines, would anyone ever use them to go to the future?

Sometimes writing is running downhill, your fingers jerking behind you on the keyboard the way your legs do when they can’t quite keep up with gravity.

To really be a nerd, she'd decided, you had to prefer fictional worlds to the real one.

I don’t trust anybody. Not anybody. And the more that I care about someone, the more sure I am they’re going to get tired of me and take off.

Smiling is confusing, she thought. This is why I don’t do it.

Months are different in college, especially freshman year. Too much happens. Every freshman month equals six regular months—they're like dog months.

I don't want to do anything. I don't even want to start this day because then I'll just be expected to finish it.

Emergency dance party--go away.

I don't like hello. It makes me sound like I have dementia, like I've never heard a phone ring before and I don't know what's supposed to happen next. Hello?

You flirt with everything." She could tell that her eyes were popping-- her eyeballs actually felt cold around the edges. "You flirt with old people and babies and everybody in between.

She was tired of being the one who cried.

As Hagrid had said, what would come would come and he would have to meet it when it did.

There are enough real enemies and threats in the world without having to invent imaginary ones.

You have to do what you love to do not get stuck in that comfort zone of a regular job. Life is not a dress rehearsal. This is it.

The usefulness of madmen is famous: they demonstrate society's logic flagrantly carried out down to its last scrimshaw scrap.

And you find as a writer there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them.

The public needs the equivalent of Chevrolets as well as Cadillacs.

Everybody wants to be loved by everybody, and they'll do everything they can to be loved, including not be who they really are, from person to person.

What Is Mathematics? This question, if asked in earnest, has no answer.

We all have ambivalent feelings toward work ... We try to avoid it, and yet we seem to require it for our emotional well-being.