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.

He realized that he had thought only about the first step, never imagined the last.

I think the Northern Ireland accent is one of the most beautiful in the world.

Things in life have no real beginning, though our stories about them always do.

He felt for a moment uncreated. Another kind of awake.

So much of her time spent like this: dreaming up things to say and never quite saying them.

A lot of people think that writers are much cleverer than they actually are. No, they're not. But they're emotionally clever, and they go into a character, and they feel something that they weren't entirely aware of beforehand.