the act does not create guilt unless the mind is also guilty.

Probably careful plotting reflects my personality. I am meticulous by nature. I can't imagine speed-writing anything that happens to pop into my head.

I love sports, as all Bostonians seem to. I love books and movies, as all writers seem to.

The interior of a teenager’s mind is an endless war between Stupid and Clever.

Predisposition is not predestination.

An emotion is a thought, yes, an idea, but it is also a sensation, an ache in your body. Desire, love, hate, fear, repulsion - you feel these things in your muscle and bones, not just in your mind.

no one worth knowing can be quite known, no one worth possessing can be quite possessed

You know, being confident isn't the same as being right.

We move through time like a man in a rowboat, looking back even as we move forward.

Good stories are driven by conflict, tension, and high stakes.

You can write a great book and be ignored. Literary history is full of classics that were under-appreciated in their own time.

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity.

Fate keeps on happening.

My girlfriend has been the ice.

A woman's uniqueness is her greatest appeal to a man - and his greatest challenge.

My grandfather's 86 and he's having a baby. Man, I hope when I'm 86 I can have babies.

I've succeeded a lot but there's still so much to do.

I don't care what anybody says, I think that George Bush is absolutely the right president to oversea the end of the world.

While it's true that some writers, when taking on love and war, find the task too big, or only succeed in one but not the other, Mengestu tracks both themes with authority and feeling.

Any man can be 62, but it takes a bus to be 62A.

I don't think something necessarily has to be mean or cynical to represent 'edgy.' I think 'edgy' can mean a lot of different things.