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.

It was morning by the clock but deepest nighttime in his body.

People don't save other people. People save themselves.

It was like autumn, looking at her. it was like driving up north to see the colors.

My change from girl to boy was far less dramatic than the distance anybody travels from infancy to adulthood.

I think the suicides in my first book came from the idea of growing up in Detroit. If you grow up in a city like that you feel everything is perishing, evanescent and going away very quickly.

Mitchell had answered that, as far as he understood them, mystical experiences were significant only to the extent that they changed a person's conception of reality, and if that changed conception led to a change in behavior and action, a loss of ego.