…There are times when something is asked of us, and we find we must do it. There is no calculation involved, no measure of the necessity of the thing itself, the action that must be performed. There is simply an acknowledgment that we will do the thing in question, and then the thing is done, often at considerable personal cost. " "What goes into these decisions? What tiny factors, invisible, in the jutting edges of personality and circumstance, contribute to this inevitability?

I don't start with an idea or concept in the sense that I flesh out an idea or concept and set it at the center of something.

Different times and different structures make more sense at one point in life than at another.

The old man began to sing. His voice was very lovely and obviously a part of something that the world had disposed of in its haste, evidence of a grander, kinder past.

Three things are required of you: the wishes you made when you first knew the breadth of this life; the contract you signed when you decided your wishes were not true or possible; and the exacting of the punishment you agreed to when you knew you would break the contract of your life.

Sunday was always the best of days for being the self you had intended to be, but were not, for one reason or another.

The books turn out to be about things afterwards. I don't go into them with concepts, for the most part.