Sometimes I still have American dreams. I mean literally. I see microwave ovens and exercise machines and grocery store shelves with 30 brands of shampoo, and I look at these things oddly, in my dream. I stand and think, "What is all this for? What is the hunger that drives this need?" I think it's fear. Codi, I hope you won't be hurt by this, but I don't think I'll ever be going back. I don't think I can.

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

Prayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction.

I'm widest awake as a writer doing something new, engaged in a process I'm not sure I can finish, generating at the edge of my powers. Some people bungee jump; I write.

Cooking is 80 percent confidence, a skill best acquired starting from when the apron strings wrap around you twice.

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.

A breeze shook rain out of new leaves onto their hair, but in their pursuit of eternity they never noticed the chill.