“In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.”

“When I read Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros as a freshman at Rutgers, it all clicked - that writing was all I wanted to do. It became my calling.”

“I didn't start writing until late high school and then I was just diddling. Mainly I loved to read and my writing was an outgrowth of that.”

“Here at last is her smile: burn it into your memory; you won't see it often.”

“She was the kind of girlfriend God gives you young, so you'll know loss the rest of your life.”

“You can't regret the life you didn't lead.”

“Dude, you don't want to be dead. Take it from me. No-pussy is bad. But dead is like no-pussy times ten.”

“If you didn't grow up like I did then you don't know, and if you don't know it's probably better you don't judge.”

“Success, after all, loves a witness, but failure can't exist without one.”