The lover`s discourse was of an extreme solitude. The solitude was extreme because it wasn`t physical. It was extreme because you felt it while in the company of the person you loved. It was extreme because it was in your head, the most solitary of places.

My goal in life is to become an adjective.

There are some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things.

Basically you come up with the fictional idea and you start writing that story, but then in order to write it and to make it seem real, you sometimes put your own memories in. Even if it's a character that's very different from you.

Sourmelina's secret (as Aunt Zo put it): 'Lina was one of those women they named the island after.

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.

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?