More to the point, I know why soldiers, home from war, seldom tell their families about their exploits in more than general terms. We who survive must go on in the names of those who fall, but if we dwell too much on the vivid details of what we've witnessed of man's inhumanity to man, we simply can't go on. perseverance is impossible if we don't permit ourselves to hope.

The most identifying trait of humanity is our abilty to be inhumane to one another.

Literary fiction, as a strict genre, is all but dead. Meanwhile, most genres flourish.

She says what holds their marriage together is that she feels too damn sorry for him to ask for a divorce.

There's lots of law these days, but not much justice. Celebrities murder their wives and go free. A mother kills her children, and the news people on TV say she's the victim and want you to send money to her lawyers. When everything's upside down like this, what fool just sits back and thinks justice will prevail?

Writing isn't a source of pain. It's psychic chemotherapy. It reduces your psychological tumors and relieves your pain.

...in an infinite universe, anything that could be imagined might somewhere exist.