“All writers, I think, are to one extent or another, damaged people. Writing is our way of repairing ourselves.”

“We're all damaged in our own way. Nobody's perfect. I think we're all somewhat screwy. Every single one of us.”

“I realize only one person will be damaged beyond repair if Peeta dies. Me.”

“Some writers are only born to help another writer write one sentence.”

“As a writer one doesn’t belong anywhere. Fiction writers, I think, are even more outside the pale, necessarily on the edge of society. Because society and people are our meat, one really doesn’t belong in the midst of society. The great challenge in writing is always to find the universal in the local, the parochial. And to do that, one needs distance.”

“I think preparing food and feeding people brings nourishment not only to our bodies but to our spirits. Feeding people is a way of loving them, in the same way that feeding ourselves is a way of honoring our own createdness and fragility.”