When I was writing 'The Abstinence Teacher,' I really tried to immerse myself in contemporary American evangelical culture.

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.

Are we just dreamingIn the city that never sleeps?Cause I can't be seeingWhat my eyes tell me.

True luck consists not in holding the best cards at the table luckiest he who knows just when to rise and go home.

The natural world is a package deal; you don't get to select which facts you like and which you don't.

I'm known for taking pictures very close, and the older I get, the closer I get.

It's the tide. It's the dismal tide. It's not the one thing.

I think the best person in her [Hillary Clinton's] campaign is mainstream media.

They were steaming out of the station before Maia asked, 'Was it books in the trunk?' 'It was books, admitted Miss Minton. And Maia said, 'Good.

The world would get along very well without literature. It would get along even better without man.

In fact, things are moving along rather well in Iraq. Nothing is perfect, of course, and freedom is messy work. The cooperation of the three major interests in Iraq has been remarkable.

I despise formal restaurants. I find all of that formality to be very base and vile. I would much rather eat potato chips on the sidewalk.