It is strange to think that we might have crossed paths, and still not have known what we were missing.

There were some people who hit your life so hard, they left a stain on your future.

A man should live his life a certain way not because of some divine authority, but because of a personal moral obligation to himself and others.

History could hover, like a faint perfume or a memory stamped on the back of one's eyelids.

When your existence is hell, death must be heaven.

I told myself that if I didn't care, this wouldn't have hurt so much - surely that proved I was alive and human and all those touchy-feely things, for once and for all. But that wasn't a relief, not when I felt like a skyscraper with dynamite on every floor.

I never lose sight of the fact that before I was a writer, I was a teacher. I still am. My classroom's just gotten a little bigger.