How strange to read of a place in a book, and then stand on it, listen to the birds sing, and spit on the cobbles if you want.

There's a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly straight, so after all it wasn't a forest but an orchard of graves. Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.

I considered her my ally, because, like me, she was imperfect.

Friends, there is nothing like your own family to make you appreciate strangers!

I don't *ever* write about real people. Art is supposed to be better than that. If you want a slice of life, look out the window.

We're surrounded by mandates, and I believe that literature should be mandate-free. I feel very strongly about that.

There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of me. And the other is that then no matter what I did, whatever I came home with, she acted like it was the moon I had just hung up in the sky and plugged in all the stars. Like I was that good.