The jocks that used to stuff me into a locker when I was a punk rocker are my best buddies now.

Reading is, at its best, not an escape; it is genuine experience. A novel is not a monologue, but a conversation, a collaboration between writer and reader, an invaluable exchange of human conditions.

I know I've lost my mind. But I'm not concerned, because it's the first thing I've lost in a long time that actually feels good.

We are born haunted, he said, his voice weak, but still clear. Haunted by our fathers and mothers and daughters, and by people we don't remember. We are haunted by otherness, by the path not taken, by the life unlived. We are haunted by the changing winds and the ebbing tides of history. And even as our own flame burns brightest, we are haunted by the embers of the first dying fire. But mostly, said Lord Jim, we are haunted by ourselves.

My neediness is not a hole to be filled but something beneath the skin scratching to get out.

It's not easy getting old, you know. Things become a lot less clear.

You have to find hope. Hope is such a shape shifter. You tend to look in the rearview mirror for hope, but when its gone, you have to look forward. You have to get in the van and keep driving on.