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.

Forgive me, O Heavenly Father, according to the multitude of Thy mercies. I have lusted in my heart to break a man's skull and scatter the stench of his brains across several people's back yards.

The truth needs so little rehearsal.

For if there is any single thing that everyone hopes for most dearly, it must be this: that the youngest outlive the oldest.

Want is a thing that unfurls unbidden like fungus, opening large upon itself, stopless, filling the sky. But needs, from one day to the next, are few enough to fit in a bucket, with room enough left to rattle like brittle brush in a dry wind.

The things I carry closest to my heart are things I can't own.

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.