Where do you go when you die? Ha ha. Go on, go on and tell her, Billy." Billy smiles. "You become a little voice in someone's ear telling them that things will be alright.

Sacrifice doesn't really exist on a national level anymore and that's a pretty new thing - most people aren't engaged nationally in some form of service and that changes the way you think about people in your country; you kind of think of them at a distance. And so there's that shift away from some sort of sacrifice - thinking of yourself as the most important thing in the world versus thinking of yourself as some sort of a whole.

[Sex] is really awkward. You know you have expectations and then it's this great moment of connection and it's a surprise. But that's what so exciting about it is that sense of surprise.

People are just greedy animals, after all.

I'm kind of interested in learning to learn and grow and challenge myself. I think I've been very fortunate in that my books are pretty different from one novel to the next. There's a lot of things that are similar but in terms of tone and the scale and how they interact with history and just the different styles as well.

Above the dirt of an unmarked grave and beneath the shadow of the abandoned refinery, the children would play their own made up games: Wild West Accountants! in which they would calculate the loss of a shipment of gold stolen from an imaginary stagecoach, or Recently Divorced Scientists! in which they would build a super-collider out of garbage to try and win back their recently lost loves.

When she cries, it is quiet, tearless, almost completely imperceptible: one more unheard prayer.