He needs to go rub his soul against life.

It's a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can't begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else.

There's always more to a story than a body can see from the fenceline.

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.

organization is the religion of the single parent.

That's how it is: some people are content to wait till you ask, while others jump right in with the whole story.

My worst nightmare is being stuck somewhere with nothing to read.