It happens to many teenagers-that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly.

I think now that is the nature of hymns-they make us want to repeat them...they are a part of any service, and often the only part of a funeral service, that makes us feel everything is acceptable.

Half my life is an act of revision; more than half the act is performed with small changes.

The object of war is to survive it.

Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.

You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.

For most of my life, when I've finished the book I'm writing, there've always been as many as two or three other novels waiting to be written next. And the decision driving which one of them it should be was never based on how long it had waited or how many accumulated pages of notes I had.