“But to be perfectly frank, this childish idea that the author of a novel has some special insight into the characters in the novel...it's ridiculous. That novel was composed of scratches on a page, dear. The characters inhabiting it have no life outside of those scratches. What happened to them? They all ceased to exist the moment the novel ended.”

“I don’t know where you got the idea that the quality of a novel should be judged by the likability of its characters, but let me submit to you that Daisy Buchanan doesn’t have to be likable to be interesting… That’s the pleasure and challenge of reading great novels. You get to see yourself as others see you, and you get to see others as they see themselves.”

“This is what I love about novels, both reading them and writing them. They jump into the abyss, to be with you”

“I want you to feel empowered to explore those questions without worrying that there is some secret answer somewhere resting with the author. The author does not have the answer. The author, despite what our culture tells us, is not the powerful one. The reader is the powerful one. The author scratches some symbols onto a page. The reader makes it live.”

“A novel is a conversation between a reader and a writer.”

“Author's NoteThis is not so much an author's note as an author's reminder of what was printed in small type a few pages ago: This book is a work of fiction. I made it up.Neither novels or their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.I appreciate your cooperation in this matter.”

“Sick children inevitably become arrested: You are fated to live out your days as the child you were when diagnosed, the child who believes there is a life after a novel ends.”