It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't.

I'm not pretending to be ingenuous; I know what I'm doing.

The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep.

Children model the behavior of adults, on whatever scale is available to them. Ours are growing up in a nation whose most important, influential men - from presidents to the coolest film characters - solve problems by killing people. ... We have taught our children in a thousand ways, sometimes with flag-waving and sometimes with a laugh track, that the bad guy deserves to die.

In the places that call me out, I know I'll recover my wordless childhood trust in the largeness of life and its willingness to take me in.

Fiction is a sort of inter-human magic, allowing you to travel into a scene and feel it tingle on your skin.

My worst nightmare is being stuck somewhere with nothing to read.