I had never taken creative writing classes. Hadn't even considered it.

From my childhood, I remember a tiny old woman named Mary, made pale and almost translucent by time. Mary's childhood memories extended back to the confusing and violent finale of the Civil War, and she told stories of brutal murders in those days and refused to name some of the killers, as if dead men might still be prosecuted in the late 1950s.

But I believe the words entered me and changed me and still work in me. The words eat me and sustain me. And when I'm dead and in a box in the dark dark ground, and all my various souls have died and I am nothing but insensible bones, something in the marrow will still feel yearning, desire persisting beyond flesh.

There was a redemption of some kind, he believed, in such complete fulfillment of a desire so long deferred.

[No] matter what a waste one has made of one's life, it is ever possible to find some path to redemption, however partial.

It always helps me connect with characters, to think about what music they respond to

Surely it is a sin to reject the few gifts we are given. Be happy in the flash of time granted to us or hurt forever.