You treat violence as an aberration ... when in truth it is the norm. It is the very essence of the human condition.

If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include the truth of contact or be forever hollow.

Love was as hardwired into the structure of the universe as gravity and matter.

In the end--when all else is dust--loyalty to those we love is all we can carry with us to the grave. Faith--true faith--was trusting in that love.

Wilkie Collins was a rival and competitor of Dickens. His novel Moonstone sold more copies at the time than Dickens' last two books. But that meant nothing in the long run. Right now, to be honest, Wilkie Collins is what he deserved to be back then: a footnote, an almost lost memory. And he knew he would become that.

It started 25 years ago, when I was teaching elementary school in a small town in Missouri

No book or poem is ever finished, merely abandoned.