Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, "I hate you, God." That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you've had in months.

Sometimes it feels like God has reached down and touched me, blessed me a thousand times over, and sometimes it all feels like a mean joke, like God's advisers are Muammar Qaddafi and Phyllis Schlafly.

It's better to be kind than to be right.

There are a lot of us, some published, some not, who think the literary life is the loveliest one possible, this life of reading and writing and corresponding. We think this life is nearly ideal.

Some people seem to understand this - that life and change take time - but I am not one of those people.

Right foot, left foot, right foot, breathe.

I understood that the man I was calling for could never ever come back. Because I understood that the man that I was calling for was dead.