Loving the ideal more than the reality is the cause of all the misery the human species creates for itself.

Maybe there's nothing impossible tonight. We're down the hole to Wonderland, and no White Rabbit to guide us." If I remember correctly, the White Rabbit was an unreliable guide, anyway.

All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined-those dead, those living, those generations yet to come-that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands.

Dare we linger, dare we skate? Dare we laugh or celebrate, knowing we may strain the ice? Preserve the ice at any price?

Another way to be awakened by the beauty and complexity of the word is to get a dog. Small Things like a plant that I had passed a thousand time and never given a second thought to. But the dog is curious. And the dog stops and wants to smell this and smell that. And the dog makes you look and focus and take the time.

I kind of build a novel the way marine polyps build a coral reef, it's millions and millions of little precarious bodies stacked on one another. And in my case, that's thousands of minutes I go through to get from one scene to the next and build it that way.

Every life is complicated, every mind a kingdom of unmapped mysteries.