My mother used to talk about passages and, once in a while, about ordeals. We all have them; we are all shaped by them. She thought the key was to find the healing in the hurt.

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

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

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?

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.