I'm beginning to believe that anything I do to extend my life is just going to be outweighed by the agony of living it.

When I turned fifty, I decided to quit the mill and go to graduate school.

I'm not sure I would have ever decided to try to write when I was forty-five if I hadn't already gotten that degree [in English].

Religion can be a good thing, but basically the way I look at it is that it provides a moral code, common sense. But then people distort it and use it as an excuse to be a bully. It's sad, but that's the way it's worked for a several thousand years now.

J.R. Angelella is a truly gifted writer. Zombie is one of the smartest, strangest, and most beautifully crafted coming-of-age stories you will ever encounter.

I look upon [writing about religion] as a nice way to get by in this precarious world, though I've never been able to do it myself.

I started going to Ohio University when I was in my mid-thirties, ended up with an English degree when I was forty.