I don’t really control the story. I just let it go where it wants to go. I have no idea what’s going to happen in the end or who’s going to live, so it’s kind of like me saying, “I don’t know, guys! Just wait.” That’s what I’m doing!
A brave man acknowledges the strength of others.
I want people to come away from my book with questions. Questions about virtue and goodness. Not answers.
Part of me wonders if this is a suicide mission disguised as a game.
I think they’re going to force us to eat lots of cake and then take an unreasonably long nap.
She can’t possibly be me, though she moves when I move.
But when I do feel all the strength go out of me, and I fall to my knees beside the table and I think I cry, then, or at least I want to, and everything inside me screams for just one more kiss, one more word, one more glance, one more.
It doesn’t prove anything except that you’re bullying us. Which, as I recall, is a sign of cowardice.
I didn’t know that idiocy caused people to just start spontaneously bleeding from the nose.
Lies require commitment.
We believe that preparation eradicates cowardice, which we define as the failure to act in the midst of fear.
I try to leave some space in my mind for things to surprise me or change my mind, I think that’s important.
We kiss again and this time, it feels familiar. I know exactly how we fit together, his arm around my waist, my hands on his chest, the pressure of his lips on mine. We have each other memorized.
Desperation can make a person do surprising things.
The official strategy is defensive pessimism, always.
Writing means not just staring ugliness in the face, but finding a way to embrace it.
I laugh, and it’s laughter, not light, that casts out the darkness building within me, that reminds me I am still alive, even in this strange place where everything I’ve ever known is coming apart.
To me, when someone wrongs you, you both share the burden of that wrongdoing – the pain of it weighs on both of you. Forgiveness, then, means choosing to bear the full weight all by yourself.
Cruelty does not make a person dishonest, the same way bravery does not make a person kind.
I feel like myself, strong and weak at once – allowed, at least for a little while, to be both.