"I'm a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't."

"France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of an idea, was harder to utter – it was the graves of Massachusetts and the cherry blossoms of Washington, and…"

"I’m not a hero. I’m just a guy who tries."

"I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of."

"I want to be able to look back and say, 'I did my best to live the life I imagined.'"