Books are like rocks. You hold one in your hand and look at it in various lights to get a sense of it, and then when you get a good angle, you throw it through a window to see what happens.

People say friends don't destroy one another. What do they know about friends?

May we all emerge from winter with our strength renewed and any unwanted pieces left under the ice.

Good things never last, bad things never die.

There are real teachers out there; I don't pretend to have their mantle.

[Dennis] Etchison would write stories that were just punch lines at the end. You wouldn't realize something horrific was happening until the last paragraph.

Our [former] governor [Pat McCrory] was supposed to be a moderate, but he found himself beholden to people who have much more draconian ideas. I think he assumed this stuff flew under the radar.