Be patient and wait. Your mud will settle. Your water will be clear.

I close my eyes and I take a deep breath and I think about my life and how I ended up this way. I think about the ruin, devastation and wreckage I have caused to myself and to others. I think about self-hatred and self-loathing. I think about how and why and what happened and the thoughts come easily, but the answers don't.

We did what our people do all the time, we told ourselves something we did was right and we found a way to justify it, even though we knew it was wrong.

But all good things come to an end, often a sad angry miserable end. The cause for such an end can usually be whittled down to one of three things: money, sickness, love lost.

A miracle is changing someone's life. Freeing them from whatever bonds them. Giving them the gift of being able to live the way they dream of living.

I've always said I'm more influenced in what I do by artists, and how they work, how they think, and the freedom they're given to work and think, than I really am by other writers.

One of the beautiful and terrible things about America is you can go there and still be whatever you want, if you bust your ass and you have some luck.