This is how moths speak to each other. They tell their love across the fields by scent. There is no mouth, the wrong words are impossible, either a mate is there or he is not, and if so the pair will find each other in the dark.

Everyone should get dirt on his hands each day. Doctors, intellectuals. Politicians, most of all. How can we presume to uplift the life of the working man, if we don't respect his work?

There was a roaring in my ears and I lost track of what they were saying. I believe it was the physical manifestation of unbearable grief.

God doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.

I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.

I don't understand how any good art could fail to be political.

The substance of grief is not imaginary. It's as real as rope or the absence of air, and like both those things, it can kill.