"When I was a little kid, I wrote this play about all these characters living in a haunted house. There was a witch who lived there, and a mummy. When they were all hassling him, this guy who bought the house - I can't believe I remember this - he said to them, 'Who's paying the mortgage on this haunted house?' I thought that was really funny."

"We always think of a diet with a big groan. But I think diets are fun. I think it is an American pastime for a lot of women."

"I feel lucky because I was a nerd, which I talk about in the book, but I had academic success, so through that, because that's what my parents put a great deal of value on, I had a great childhood because I sort of fulfilled the expectations of being good at school."

"I would love to be married. But it's not a necessity like the way that I feel I need and want to have children. It would be wonderful to have a husband, and I would feel blessed to do it. But I would feel sad for the rest of my life if I had no kids."

"Cowardice... is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination."

"Sadness is a very interesting idea, this idea of sadness being some kind of default setting that artists will go into. And then I started thinking about this idea of sadness and happiness, and the idea that sadness is very loud, and happiness is quiet."

"Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining."

"The human race is governed by its imagination."