Sometimes a thing that's hard is hard because you're doing it wrong. (Point Omega)

The figure of the gunman in the window was inextricable from the victim and his history. This sustained Oswald in his cell. It gave him what he needed to live. The more time he spent in a cell, the stronger he would get. Everybody knew who he was now.

The novel is the dream release, the suspension of reality that history needs to escape its own brutal confinements.

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.

A novel determines its own size and shape and I've never tried to stretch an idea beyond the frame and structure it seemed to require.

The term itself--my life--is a desperate overstatement.

It is possible to be homesick for a place even when you are there.