Grief, when it comes, is nothing like we expect it to be.

A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty.

We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices.

Mourning has its place but also its limits.

I need an hour alone before dinner, with a drink, to go over what I've done that day. I can't do it late in the afternoon because I'm too close to it. Also, the drink helps. It removes me from the pages.

Burroughs's voice is hard, derisive, inventive, free, funny, serious, poetic, indelibly American.

I can't imagine writing if I didn't have a reader. Any more than an actor can imagine acting without an audience.