“There are no happy endings, only breaks in the regular action.”

“Here are the top three things I’ve learned in my twenty-two years on the planet:1. Never wipe your butt with poison ivy.2. People are like ants: Just a few of them give all the orders. And most of them spend their lives getting squashed.3. There are no happy endings, only breaks in the regular action.Of all of them, number three is really the only one you have to keep in mind”

“Unhappiness is bondage; therefore, happiness is freedom. The way to find happiness is through the cure. Therefore, it is only through the cure that one finds freedom.”

“But maybe happiness isn't in the choosing. Maybe it's in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.”

“. . . Liesl & Po is the embodiment of what writing has always been for me at its purest and most basic - not a paycheck, certainly; not an idea, even; and not an escape. Actually, it is the opposite of an escape; it is a way back in, a way to enter and make sense of a world that occasionally seems harsh and terrible and mystifying, And, of course, it is a way of finding a happy ending - even, or especially, when the happy ending is denied me in real life. Let it be an escape for its readers. For me, it is a way of not letting go.”

“Step on a crack , you'll break your mama's back.Step on a stone, you'll end up all alone.Step on a stick, you're bound to get the Sick.Watch where you tread, you'll bring out all the dead. - A common children's playground chant, usually accompanied by jumping rope or clapping.”

“Huamns, uregulated, are cruel and capricious; violet and selfish; miserable and quarrelsome. It is only after their instincts and basic emotions have been controlled that they can be happy, generous, and good.”