You build a wall to keep something unwanted out … or to hold something precious in.

That's the paradox of loss: How can something that's gone weigh us down so much?

The way I challenge myself is by writing something that really engages me, that doesn't have an easy answer, and isn't always an easy book to write.

Anger, though, is too fierce a flame to last for long, and when it burned out, I was left numb and wondering.

You want to write something as good as what you've read.

It was so damn hard to find love in this world, to locate someone who could make you feel that there was a reason you'd been put on this earth. A child, I imagined, was the purest form of that. A child was the love you didn't have to look for, didn't have to prove anything to, didn't have to worry about losing. Which is why, when it happened, it hurt so badly.

Who spit in your porridge?