“We all have our fictions, little lies we tell ourselves to keep going from one day to the next.”

“Seymour once said that all we do our whole lives is go from one little piece of Holy Ground to the next.”

“The worst lies in life are the ones we tell ourselves.”

“The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves.”

“…we all lie to ourselves; we tell our own selves more lies than we ever do other people.”

“The first act of insight is throw away the labels. In fiction, while we do not necessarily write about ourselves, we write out of ourselves, using ourselves; what we learn from, what we are sensitive to, what we feel strongly about--these become our characters and go to make our plots. Characters in fiction are conceived from within, and they have, accordingly, their own interior life; they are individuals every time.”

“Fiction comes in all shapes and sizes. Secrets, lies, stories. We all tell them. Sometimes, because we hope to entertain. Sometimes, because we need to distract. And sometimes, because we have to.”

“Sometimes the biggest lies we tell are to ourselves.”

“Hope is the lies we tell ourselves about the future.”

“All of us have theories about the world and about ourselves. We will go to great lengths to prove ourselves right because it keeps the world in our head coherent and understandable.”