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.

When it seems you have nothing at all to live for, death is not especially frightening.

But history does matter. There is a line connecting the Armenians and the Jews and the Cambodians and the Bosnians and the Rwandans. There are obviously more, but, really, how much genocide can one sentence handle?

Food is a gift and should be treated reverentially--romanced and ritualized and seasoned with memory.

Dead … might not be quiet at all.

Lie. Put down on paper the most interesting lies you can imagine. . .and then make them plausible.