It feels strange to me to be living in a box, hiding from the steadying influence of the moon; wearing the hide of a cow, which is supposed to be dyed to match God-knows-what, on my feet; making promises over the telephone about things I will do at a precise hour next year.

The substance of grief is not imaginary. It's as real as rope or the absence of air, and like both those things, it can kill.

Sugar, it's no parade but you'll get down the street one way or another, so you'd just as well throw your shoulders back and pick up the pace.

But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.

The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.

...prodigal summer, the season of extravagant procreation. It could wear out everything in its path with its passionate excesses, but nothing alive with wings or a heart or a seed curled into itself in the ground could resist welcoming it back when it came.

I know I'm a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.