Writing fiction takes me out of time. I sit down and the clock will not exist for me for a few hours. That’s probably as close to immortal as we’ll ever get.

My bones are ringing the way sometimes people say their ears are ringing, I'm so tired.

If you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it’s probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we’re here for is to learn how to do it

We're not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the reader's own life "outside" the story changes the story.

It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art.

That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we're all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine.

I love the way you love, but I hate the way I'm supposed to love you back.