my own relationships with the animals in my life are absurdly complex: Some I love, some I eat, and the scraps left over from the ones I eat, I feed to the ones I love.

In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.

What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.

April is the cruelest month, T.S. Eliot wrote, by which I think he meant (among other things) that springtime makes people crazy. We expect too much, the world burgeons with promises it can't keep, all passion is really a setup, and we're doomed to get our hearts broken yet again. I agree, and would further add: Who cares? Every spring I go out there anyway, around the bend, unconditionally. ... Come the end of the dark days, I am more than joyful. I'm nuts.

It is harrowing for me to try to teach 20-year-old students, who earnestly want to improve their writing. The best I can think to tell them is: Quit smoking, and observe posted speed limits. This will improve your odds of getting old enough to be wise.

I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence.

Our childhood had passed over into history overnight. The transition was unnoticed by anyone but ourselves.