"For my group of friends is Lady Gaga eye-opening? No. She's a less dangerous version of what was so cool about pop culture in the '80s. Back then it was so gay and so punk in so many ways."

"When I moved out of my mom's house at 18 I was almost as sad to leave her sewing machine behind as anything else."

"Olympia was a town crawling with music. I was new to the whole punk scene. The culture shock continued Olympia had bagels! We didn't have bagels in Arkansas. You could order vegetarian food all over town! It was so crazy to me - a place with so many vegetarians, the restaurants made special dishes for them?"

"My mother told me Homer Ditto was not my father. Nope. Mom had had a fling with some other guy who was my dad. Some dude who didn't stick around too long who Mom was happy to get rid of. She chose Homer, and Homer chose me, so he lent me his name even though I didn't have his blood."

"Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment."

"I can remember exactly where I sat when my teacher first read Roald Dahl's 'James and the Giant Peach'."

"The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read."

"Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are."