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.

Novelists are always resisting autobiographical readings of their work, because they know how false those can be.

If love were endless, if it were on tap, it wouldn't hit us the way it does. And we certainly wouldn't write about it.

What if you had faith and performed good works, what if you died and went to heaven, and what if all the people you met there were people you didn't like?

Children learn to speak Male or Female the way they learn to speak English or French.

Remember that day you said you loved me? Remember that? See, you could do that because you're basically a sane person, who grew up in a loving, sane family. You could take a risk like that. But in my family we didn't go around saying we loved each other. We went around screaming at each other. So what do I do, when you say you love me? I go and undermine it.

We knew that Cecilia had killed herself because she was a misfit, because the beyond called to her, and we knew that her sisters, once abandoned, felt her calling from that place, too.