I try not to think too much about an audience when I'm writing the first draft of a book - at that stage, the prospect of anyone reading what I've written would be enough to scare me into setting my laptop on fire.

Pick a pair of them, lost in each other, a matched set like a vision out of the past. Nobody special, two nobodies. Except that together, they’re radioactive; together, they glow.

Be the person you were so I can be the person you made me.

She felt, at times, that what had seemed like an infinity of choice turned out to be a funnel, life narrowing itself one bad decision at a time, each mistake cutting the options by half, spiraling her ever downward until there was nowhere left to fall but into a small, dark hole that had no bottom. Choosing.

Origin stories are irrelevant. Nothing matters less than how you were born. What matters is how you die, and how you live. We live for each other, so anything that got us to that point must have been right.

You could love something and still understand it had ruined your life.

And you know what? If there is a God, and it’s that same God who’s so eager to have temples built in honor of his greatness, and wars fought over him, and people dropping to their knees telling him what a wonderful, magnificent being he is? If this all-powerful, all-knowing creature for some reason just can’t get by without my worship? Then let him give me some proof. Or at least get over himself if I decide to go out and get some.

That if I pretended hard enough nothing was waiting to claim me, nothing ever would.

It’s significantly more satisfying to kick a wall than it is to kick thin air. For the rebellious teen- or the teen who wants to feel like a rebel- a clearly defined law gives you something to define yourself against.

The doctor’s voice was cold. “There’s nothing to put back. There’s no body to go back to. The body of Lia Kahn is dead. Be grateful you didn’t die with it.