I'm not a writer because I want to make money. I'm a writer because I'm a very slow thinker, but I do care about thinking, and the only way I know how to think with any kind of finesse is by telling stories.

Immortality is a chancy thing; it cannot be promised or earned. Perhaps it cannot even be identified for what it is.

Before catechisms can instill a proper humility, small children know the truth that their own existence has caused the world to bloom into being.

Yes, I'm nervous. You'll find in time most people are. They simply learn better how to disguise it, and sometimes, if they're wise, how to use their anxiety to serve the public good.

...the reasons just reassemble themselves in different patterns every time I think about it.

Waking up was a daily cruelty, an affront, and she avoided it by not sleeping.

Speaking uses us up, speeds us up. Without prayer, that act of confession for merely existing, one might live forever and not know it.