Only meaning can make a difference and we all know there's no meaning. All stories express a desire for meaning, not meaning itself. Therefore any difference knowing the story makes is a delusion.

I'm with Milton and the Rolling Stones: I don't find the Devil an unsympathetic character. But in any case, my fiction is populated as much by people who do good as it is by those who do bad. I'm interested in imaginatively accommodating as much of the human as possible, for which you need both moral extremes and everything in between.

Kneecaps only exist to get hit with claw-hammers; grace only exists to be fallen from.

Peace is purchased in the currency of loss.

Only meaning can make a difference and we all know there's no meaning. All stories express a desire for meaning, not meaning itself. Therefore any difference knowing the story makes is a delusion.

When you're a kid it's people's cruelty that makes you cry, then when you're an adult it's their kindness.

Words betrayed her: beautiful butterflies in her mind; dead moths when she opened her mouth for their release into the world.