"At the age of 31, I realized, 'Oh my God, I may die like everyone else.'"
"People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were scared of being alone."
"Do you remember when you were 10 or 11 years old and you really thought your folks were the best? They were completely omniscient and you took their word for everything. And then you got older and you went through this hideous age when suddenly they were the devil, they were bullies, and they didn't know anything."
"When I first started writing, it was me alone with a computer in my apartment. I hated the time away from other people, and my writing sucked. Now I have a laptop; I can do the most tedious part of my job in a public place."
"My books are always about somebody who is taken from aloneness and isolation - often elevated loneliness - to community. It may be a denigrated community that is filthy and poor, but they are not alone; they are with people."
"Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?"
"Why is it you feel like a dope if you laugh alone, but that's usually how you end up crying?"
"The most boring scenes are the scenes where a character is alone."
"The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open."
