Loss as muse. Loss as character. Loss as life.

I am an affirmative action hire.

Raising children is a spur-of-the-moment, seat-of-the-pants sort of deal, as any parent knows, particularly after an adult child says that his most searing memory consists of an offhand comment in the car on the way to second grade that the parent cannot even dimly recall.

Fashions in bigotry come and go. The right thing lasts.

I got a fortune cookie that said, "To remember is to understand." I have never forgotten it. A good judge remembers what it was like to be a lawyer. A good editor remembers being a writer. A good parent remembers what it was like to be a child.

I hope readers will do what I do when I read a novel I like: talk in ways that will illuminate their own lives.

I'm a Catholic of the New Testament, I'm not a Catholic of the hierarchy.