Thanks for this day, for all birds safe in their nests, for whatever this is, for life.

Now, see, that's why you want Internet friends. You can find people just exactly like you. Screw your neighbors and your family, too messy...the trouble is, once you filter out everybody that doesn't agree with you, all that's left is maybe this one retired surfer guy living in Idaho.

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

The gods you do not pay are the ones that can curse you best.

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

Those first few weeks are an unearthly season. From the outside you remain so ordinary, no one can tell from looking that you have experienced an earthquake of the soul. You've been torn asunder, invested with an ancient, incomprehensible magic. It's the one thing that we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.

Terms like that, 'Humane Society,' are devised with people like me in mind, who don't care to dwell on what happens to the innocent.