I like literature that you respond to in some way. You laugh, you cry, you turn the light on - that's great, it's eliciting a response by proxy.

The past is an obdurate stranger that puts as many marks on us as we attempt to impose on it.

The great thing about books is that you can end with a question mark.

Everything comes home, my mother used to say; every word spoken, every shadow cast, every footprint in the sand. It can't be helped; it's part of what makes us who we are.

Somehow the anticipation of pain can be even more troubling, more a misery than the pain itself.

A named thing is a tamed thing.

The right circumstances sometimes happen of their own accord, slyly, without fanfare, without warning. Layman's alchemy. . . . The magic of everyday things.