“When you're a kid, and you first start reading grown-up books, it's like looking in a window at night at people who think no one is around.”

“Books. They are lined up on shelves or stacked on a table. There they are wrapped up in their jackets, lines of neat print on nicely bound pages. They look like such orderly, static things. Then you, the reader come along. You open the book jacket, and it can be like opening the gates to an unknown city, or opening the lid of a treasure chest. You read the first word and you're off on a journey of exploration and discovery.”

“It's like you're a character in this book that everyone around you is writing, and suddenly you have to say, 'I'm sorry, but this role isn't right for me'. And you have to start writing your own life and doing your own thing.”

“There are times when I can find myself in a book, too, for two or three hours. But afterward I have such an urge to go out and reach for other people. Very often they're not around. There's also a metaphysical loneliness. We all feel it. The burden of living one's own life is experiencing sensations that no one else can share. You take a step in a house, you start moving around the house, no one else moves with you. You're walking by yourself.”

“I don't think kids or grown-ups should be so eager to punish "geek" enthusiasm with shaming, even if the enthusiasm is for arcane things.”

“corrode, v.I spent all this time building a relationship. Then one night I left the window open and it started to rust.”

“The goal of life is to take everything that made you weird as a kid and get people to pay you money for it when you're older.”