It is not enough for a story to flow. It has to kind of trickle and glint as it crosses over the stones of the bare facts.

I'm somewhat shy about the brutal facts of being a carnivore. I don't like meat to look like animals. I prefer it in the form of sausages, hamburger and meat loaf, far removed from the living thing.

Russia is the only country of the world you can be homesick for while you're still in it.

The great thing about the dead, they make space.

Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.

Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better.

I remember one English teacher in the eighth grade, Florence Schrack, whose husband also taught at the high school. I thought what she said made sense, and she parsed sentences on the blackboard and gave me, I'd like to think, some sense of English grammar and that there is a grammar, that those commas serve a purpose and that a sentence has a logic, that you can break it down. I've tried not to forget those lessons, and to treat the English language with respect as a kind of intricate tool.