Time ticks by; we grow older. Before we know it, too much time has passed and we've missed the chance to have had other people hurt us. To a younger me this sounded like luck; to an older me this sounds like a quiet tragedy.

Only losers make decisions when things are bad. The time to rejig your life is the time when it's seemingly smooth.

Storytelling is ultimately a creative act of pattern recognition. Through characters, plot and setting, a writer creates places where previously invisible truths become visible. Or the storyteller posits a series of dots that the reader can connect.

You wait for fate to bring about the changes in life which you should be bringing about by yourself.

My secret is that I need God—that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.

I don't think anyone ever gets over anything in life; they merely get used to it.

All families are psychotic. Everybody has basically the same family - it's just reconfigured slightly different from one to the next.