One paradox of professional writing is that books written solely for money and/or acclaim will almost never be good enough to garner either.

There is no hatred in my love for you. Only a sadness I feel all the more strongly for my inability to explain or describe it.

What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant.

Fiction is about what it is to be a human being.

Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude - but the fact is that, in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have life-or-death importance. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense.

Entertainment provides relief. Art provokes engagement.

It's weird to feel like you miss someone you're not even sure you know.