Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.

Travel definitely affects me as a writer.

A real diamond is never perfect.

Anyone who has spent a few nights in a tent during a storm can tell you: The world doesn't care all that much if you live or die.

You don't say, I'm going to be a writer when I grow up - at least I didn't.

You bury your childhood here and there. It waits for you, all your life, to come back and dig it up.

We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.