The first fiction I ever wrote was short stories. I was writing short stories in my late teens and early twenties, and I think it's how you teach yourself to write.

He considered it a shame when people couldn't grasp the infinite-a failure not just of imagination but of simple vision.

This is what happens when you live in dreams, he thought: you dream this and you dream that and you sleep right through your life.

I come from a newspaper background, so maybe Im attuned to current events.

Life, he thought, is a blatant act of imagination.

He found himself in habiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment.

Then she smiled, and in that instant, if such a thing were possible, Pasquale fell in love, and he would remain in love for the rest of his life--not so much with the woman, whom he didn't even know, but with the moment.