“If you're going to be soulless, you should at least consider outsourcing your conscience to someone else.”

“It shows something, though: if you're going to be soulless, you should at least consider outsourcing your conscience to someone else.”

“And when someone else speaks your name you feel pleased. You feel wanted. You feel there. Alive. Even if they're saying your name with dislike, at least you know you're you, that you exist.”

“Follow your passion. Stay true to yourself. Never follow someone else's path unless you're in the woods and you're lost and you see a path. By all means, you should follow that.”

“Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects.”

“But you're almost eighteen. You're old enough. Everyone else is doing it.And next year someone is going to say to someone else 'but you're only sixteen, everyone else is doing it' Or one day someone will tell your daughter that she's only thirteen and everyone else is doing it. I don't want to do it because everyone else is doing it.”