It's lonely to listen to the pleasure of others, not that I've made a habit of that kind of eavesdropping. There's joy and passion in the next room, in the next bed, but it's not yours.

Slamming the book shut produces a wind on the face, a weather that is copyrighted by the author, and this wind may not be deployed without permission, nor may the pages be turned without express written permission.

Among other things, autoimmune disorders are an induction into a world of unstable information and no reliable expertise.

To refrain from storytelling is perhaps one of the highest forms of respect we can pay. Those people, with no stories to circle them, can die without being misunderstood.

Without sound, celebration and grief look nearly the same.

Fiction becomes a place where I face certain fears such as losing language or losing my children.

My first book, 'The Age of Wire and String,' came out in 1995, and it was hardly reviewed at all.