When I look out the window, I exhale a prayer of thanks for the color green, for my children's safety, for the simple acts of faith like planting a garden that helped see us through another spring, another summer. And I inhale some kind of promise to protect my kids' hopes and good intentions we began with in this country. Freedom of speech, the protection of diversity - these are the most important ingredients of American civil life and my own survival. If I ever took them for granted, I don't know.

I'm never going to tell the reader what to believe; I'm going to examine these characters that believe different ways, and examine their motives.

Humans can be fairly ridiculous animals.

My life is a pitiful, mechanical thing without a past, like a little wind-up car, ready to run in any direction someone points me.

Life proceeds, it enrages. The untouched ones spend their luck without a thought, believing they deserve it.

We came from Bethlehem, Georgia bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle.

We agreed with him in principal - we were little scientists, born and bred. But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.