“A lot of people hate heroes. I was criticized for portraying people who are brave, honest, loving, intelligent. That was called weak and sentimental. People who dismiss all real emotion as sentimentality are cowards. They’re afraid to commit themselves, and so they remain ‘cool’ for the rest of their lives, until they’re dead—then they’re really cool.”

“Stories are full of people who find that, in extreme situations, they’re capable of so much more than they imagined they were. Real life is full of people who find that they’re capable of so much less.”

“Yet, in the middle of all this grief, I realize there’s a part of me clinical enough to want to document it. People talk about artists like they’re these sensitive, delicate beings who don’t use the toilet, but I think the real ones are something else. They’re users. They’re mercenaries. They’re hunters. And they don’t let anything – other people, or themselves – get in the way of it.”

“People who claim they’re evil are usually no worse than the rest of us. It’s the people who claim that they’re good, or any way better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of”

“Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.”

“The thing is that people only get hurt—really hurt—when they’re trying to play it safe. That’s when people get injured, when they pull back at the last second because they’re scared. They hurt themselves and other people.”