I am ashamed every day, and more ashamed the next. But I will spend the rest of my life in this living space writing these notes, this journal, recording my acts and reflections, finding some honor, some worth at the bottom of things. I want ten thousand pages that will stop the world.

Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn.

The smoke alarm went off in the hallway upstairs, either to let us know the battery had just died or because the house was on fire.

It was important for him to believe that he'd spent his life among people who kept missing the point.

Prayer is a practical strategy, the gaining of temporal advantage in the capital markets of Sin and Remission.

In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that he aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices.

Stories are consoling, fiction is one of the consolation prizes for having lived in the world.