Our own front door can be a wonderful thing, or a sight we dread; rarely is it only a door.

When we let ourselves respond to poetry, to music, to pictures, we are clearing a space where new stories can root, in effect we are clearing a space for new stories about ourselves.

Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.

The ancients believed in fate because they recognized how hard it is for anyone to change anything. The pull of past and future is so strong that the present is crushed by it. We lie helpless in the force of patterns inherited and patterns re-enacted by our own behavior. The burden is intolerable.

I wanted to write a new fable and see how many rules you could break.

It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will invent what you want to hear.

This is not a love story, but love is in it. That is, love is just outside it, looking for a way to break in.