The understanding that we reach a point where we stop becoming something and start ending as something. That comes at different times in different points in different people's lives, and obviously there are lots of people who experience the presence of death much more keenly and much earlier than I did. But we all come to grips with it eventually.

I have learned that newborn infants roll their eyes around and move their heads and their arms in short jerky spasms. And if you homeschool them, they will stay this way forever.

Borges was unapologetically smart and equally sentimental; a proto-geek, blind to distinctions between low pulp fiction and high criticism, experimental but never arch, and always playful, with a humor as dry as dust.

A lot of my time is spent reading antique or out-of-print books of reference.

My biggest superhero of writing is Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine fabulist. He's an amazingly perceptive writer, but also willing to make a joke.

I don't really collect anything. I mean, if I see a piece of Moxie soda memorabilia, I'll probably buy it. I'm a sucker for regional soda brands and forgotten histories and that sort of thing.

I would say aside from Moxie soda bottles and Masonic artifacts, there's nothing I really collect.