I think the sport of wrestling, which I became involved with at the age of 14... I competed until I was 34, kind of old for a contact sport. I coached the sport until I was 47. I think the discipline of wrestling has given me the discipline I have to write.

Safer than we are.” I told Franny. “Safer than love.” “let me tell ya kid,” Franny said to me, squeezing my hand. “Everything’s safer than love.

wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn't reading.

…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.

In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us -- not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.

I don't want you to describe to me—not ever—what you were doing to that poor boy to make him sound like that; but if you ever do it again, please cover his mouth with your hand.

This is a writer’s lesson: To learn that the sounds that we imagine can be the clearest, loudest sounds of all.