Writers write about what obsesses them. You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I'm writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is.

It seems an insult to the night to speak of purpose and intent, when this common moment is so brimming full of blessed design tranquility. All things follow their course.

Then, are you master of us all? You didn't teach her that. Was she supposed to imbibe it from my quiet subservience?

I grabbed her ankle and kissed it, and when I looked up I saw her chin and her eyelashes as she threw back her head and laughed.

Goodnight sweet prince, may flights of devils wing you to your rest.

We are predators, whose all-seeing eyes were meant to give them detachment.

And books, they offer one hope -- that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.