A book is completed only when it is finished by a reader.

How inevitable it is; we step into an ordinary moment and never come out again.

Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.

There are no days more full than those we go back to.

Novels are more difficult simply because they are longer and require more juggling, but short stories are closer to perfection, if you can get the language right.

She takes another long haul, lets the smoke settle in her lungs-- she has heard somewhere that cigarettes are good for grief. One long drag and you forget how to cry. The body too busy dealing with the poison.

It was a silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful.