I tried writing fiction as a little kid, but had a teacher humiliate me, so didn't write again until I was a senior in college.

purification in fire. public cremation

There is no God, there is only what you want.

No matter how unappealing, each of them imagines he is somehow worthy.

My father was an engineer - he wasn't literary, not a writer or a journalist, but he was one of the world's great readers. Every two weeks, he'd take me to our local branch library and pull books off the shelf for me, stacking them up in my arms - 'Have you read this? And this? And this?"

I couldn't imagine owning beauty like my mothers. I wouldn't dare.

Love could never bloom in a concrete block room.