Stories are there to be told, and each story changes with the telling. Time changes them. Logic changes them. Grammar changes them. History changes them. Each story is shifted side-ways by each day that unfolds. Nothing ends. The only thing that matters, as Faulkner once put it, is the human heart in conflict with itself. At the heart of all this is the possibility, or desire, to create a piece of art that talks to the human instinct for recovery and joy.

The stars looked like nail heads in the sky--pull a few of them out and the darkness would fall.

There is always room for at least two truths.

Sometimes we just walk into something that is not for us at all. We pretend it is. We think we can shrug it off like a coat, but it's not a coat at all, it's more like another skin. [...] All I wanted was to make my life thrilling for a while: to take the oridinary objects of my days and make a different argument out of them, no obligations to my past.

I write about what I know; and I write about things that are new to me, and that I didn't know before.

The luxury of age was the giving up of vanity.

I'm only telling you on the truth," he said. "If you can't stand the truth, don't ask for it.