Drug programs began to turn their attention and money away from prevention and into maintenance. Methadone was cheaper than social workers, I suppose.

If you think about it, fiction is nothing more than gossip about the people you've made up.

It's easier to write about a place sometimes when you've left it, when you can apply your imagination to your memory and let your emotions guide the writing about a place.

Pleasure is, after all, a luxury. It's love that's essential.

Writing a story, you understand, is not done by consensus. But we do learn from each other, and we remind ourselves how important this work we're doing is.

Love is always a surprise and you never get it right.

There were the fairy tales my father told to me at bedtime. All the standards. I thought my father invented wolves.