Okay, let’s put it this way. I would like to sleep with you. But it’s alright if I don’t sleep with you. What I’m saying is I’d like to be as fair as possible. I don’t want to force anything on anybody, any more than I’d want anything forced on me. It’s enough that I feel your presence or see your commas swirling around me.

I was thirty-seven then, strapped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to the Hamburg airport.

The body is not the only target of rape. Violence does not always take a visible form, and not all wounds gush blood.

I don't think of myself as an artist. I'm just a guy who can write.

Memory is like fiction; or else it's fiction that's like memory.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It's like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

Thinking about spaghetti that boils eternally but is never done is a sad, sad thing.