“I should write a serious book on China. If I did that and put in a lot of subtext about love and maybe compared it to the Great Wall or communism or something I could show the parallels between how we are forced to act in society due to cultural mores, versus how we really are, like, behind our own personal Jungian Great Walls. Then people would take my writing seriously like they do with Marni and Tess and that guy who wrote the Great Gatsby.”

“The only other consistent thing in Billy’s life was his father. Billy didn’t call him that though. He’d always called him Pop. Billy’s Pop would have laughed at all that career day stuff. Pop didn’t have crazy hair but Billy was pretty sure he was a genius. Pop told him stuff they didn’t let you in on at school, like how there was supposed to be future stuff already, like moving sidewalks and monorails and jetpacks. Pop told him that the government had lied and screwed people out of all that stuff and the only reason we ever went to the moon was to bury Jimmy Hoffa up there.”

“I can’t stop and all I have is a word addiction. Conjunction-Junction really fucked me up as a kid. This is all childhood trauma that’s manifesting itself in word needles and I can’t find enough good veins.”

“I didn't want to be such a good girl anymore. I wanted people to fear messing with me. ... I wanted to be intimidating. At least that's how I acted. The truth is, what I really wanted more than anything was to be liked. As much as I talked bad about those girls, I would have given anything for them to like me.”

“Write something to suit yourself and many people will like it; write something to suit everybody and scarcely anyone will care for it.”

“Two whores who finally found something to mother. A guy could write a book about it, he thought bitterly, call it From Hair To Maternity. It would probly be a very long book. Whores did not produce as fast as rabbits.”

“I do like people to read the books twice, because I write my novels about ideas which concern me deeply and I think are important, and therefore I want people to take them seriously. And to read it twice of course is taking it seriously.”