That's the way I will write characters, put a fair amount of myself in them, and then everyone else who was like that person, I will pick and choose.

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 the combination of many factors... With most people, suicide is like Russian roulette. Only one chamber has a bullet. With the Lisbon girls, the gun was loaded. A bullet for family abuse. A bullet for genetic predisposition. A bullet for historical malaise. A bullet for inevitable momentum. The other two bullets are impossible to name, but that doesn't mean the chambers were empty.

-Who are you, anyway? -Just someone who knows, from personal experience, how attractive it can be to think you can save somebody else by loving them.

I saw the movie, he said. I know what it's about. Listen to this. When girls get to be about twelve or so - he leaned toward us - their tits bleed.

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

There comes a moment, when you get lost in the woods, when the woods begin to feel like home.