"Language acquisition is something I’ve thought about a great deal in my life—my parents learning English, my navigating English and Cantonese, and various language extinctions in my life."

"I generally write for about three hours and then panic about the things on my to-do list."

"Our book is about the function of the brain. We argue that we live in a world that is chaotic and often unpredictable, and the book presents our thesis that the brain invents a simplified world to help us navigate this chaos and conduct our daily activities."

"One morning, I got out of bed and looked out my window and saw a group of children dressed in full tactical gear."

"The essays move around a lot in subject and form -- there are shorter, more lyric pieces, longer works of cultural criticism and literary journalism, some memoir work; one is about Brad Pitt eating on screen, another is about watching LeBron James's online dad content, another is about Andy Warhol's diaries"

"I believe that broken bodies tell broken stories. Or, they can, at least. Mine does."