Chunks of his life fell away, so that while we were moving ahead in time, he was moving back.

The humming of my parents' voices from behind my bedroom wall, which throughout my childhood had filled me with a sense of security, had now become a source of anxiety and panic.

He knew a lot about his grandparents - and perhaps he feels he's been endowed with abilities to go into people's heads who are long dead - but, to a certain extent, he's making it up.

The zipper opened all the way down our spines.

Planning is for the world's great cities, for Paris, London, and Rome, for cities dedicated, at some level, to culture. Detroit, on the other hand, was an American city and therefore dedicated to money, and so design had given way to expediency.

A girl's not a watermelon you plug a hole in to see if it's sweet.

When you stood between somebody you loved and death, it was hard to be awake and it was hard to sleep.