In America right now, we use words like 'smart' to talk about bombs. American rhetoric is grounded in ideas of capital-G Good, capital-E Evil, and it's very clear who is on which side. But in a book you can do just the opposite. You can use all lower-case words.

I took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question: "Do you like me?

Even if I don't like what I am, I know what I am. My children like what they are, but they don't know what they are. So tell me which is worse.

Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?

Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don't mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.

The hardest part of writing is not to get the ideas but to remember, why it is important to get them.

I hated myself for going, why couldn't I be the kind of person who stays?