Lies are infinite in number, and the truth so small and singular.

This is what it means to be alone: everyone is connected to everyone else, their bodies are a bright liquid life flowing around you, sharing a single heart that drives them to move all together. If the shark comes they will all escape, and leave you to be eaten.

Why is it that only girls stand on the sides of their feet? As if they're afraid to plant themselves?

I live in a rural part of Virginia surrounded by farms and farmers.

Of the two hundred bones in the human body, more than a quarter are in the foot. It is a more complicated instrument than an automobile transmission, and it is treated with far less consideration.

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

I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence.