Birth and death: there was the same consciousness of heightened existence and of her own elevated importance

Fats and Andrew were perhaps equally aware that the admiration in their relationship flowed mostly from Andrew to Fats; but Fats alone suspected that he needed Andrew more than Andrew needed him.

Would the realization of Sukhvinder’s desperation lead, at last, to some crack in her mother’s implacable disapproval, her disappointment, her endless stone-faced criticism?

You've got to work. It's about structure. It's about discipline. It's all these deadly things that your school teacher told you you needed... You need it.

Jo speaking to Charlie Rose re: writing

It’s so difficult to describe depression to someone who’s never been there, because it’s not sadness. I know sadness. Sadness is to cry and to feel. But it’s that cold absence of feeling— that really hollowed-out feeling.

My readers have to work with me to create the experience. They have to bring their imaginations to the story. No one sees a book in the same way, no one sees the characters the same way. As a reader you imagine them in your own mind. So, together, as author and reader, we have both created the story.