When I was young, I asked my priest how to get to heaven and still protect yourself from all the evil in the world. He told me what God told His children;'You are sheep among wolves, be wise as the serpent, yet innocent as doves.

I have a lot of rage about things that didn't happen to me, tied up with watching an immigrant, working-class father struggle to make his way through the world - and seeing how society was modeled to keep him in his place.

Grief, he said, is carnivorous.

Maybe there are some things we were put on this earth not to know.

I believe so deeply in the primacy of language, in lifting your prose to the highest level you're capable of and making your words symphonic.

Charm was the luxury of those who still believed in the essential rightness of things. In purity and picket fences.

There are so many more important things to worry about than how you're perceived by strangers.