My genius is not so frail a thing that it cowers from the dirty fingers of newspapernen.

All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes -- characters even -- caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner.

She was a do-gooder, which means that all the ill she did, she did without realizing it.

I shall start at the beginning. Though of coarse, the beginning is never where you think it is.

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.

Tragedy alters everything.