My grandparents, like many genocide survivors, took most of their stories to their graves.

I have lived with magic and without magic, and I can tell you with certainty that a life with magic is better.

A single, ordinary person still can make a difference - and single, ordinary people are doing precisely that every day.

And though some days it is very hard, I try not to live for the future. And I try not to dream of the past.

The honest answer is more complex. On some level I was sent. Or inspired. Or called. But my calling, such as it was, wasn't a single booming invitation from above (really, is it ever?).

We may talk a good game and write even better ones, but we never outgrow those small wounded things we were when we were five and six and seven.

The world is filled with human toxins -- not the darkness that we all occasionally crave, but actually people who are so unwilling to bask in the angelic light that is offered us all that they grow poisonous -- and you can pray for their eventual recovery and healing. And sometimes those prayers will be answered. But sometimes these individuals have been vaccinated against goodness and against angels and they are so unwilling to give an inch to their God that often they never (and I use this expression absolutely literally) see the light.