A baby was a fact. It was a being with a mind and a nature, and you could feel about it any way you liked, but a baby wouldn't care. Just by existing, it demanded that you believe in a future: the future it would crawl in, walk in, live in. A baby was a piece of time; it was a promise you made that the world made back to you.

You learn to write by reading, and my experiences and tastes as a reader are pretty wide.

I came to Houston for a job, the reason most people move halfway across the country with a first grader and a five-week-old. I came here to teach at Rice.

I was a 'Planet of the Apes'-obsessed kid.

It was what you did, Wolgast understood; you started to tell a story about who you were, and soon enough the lies were all you had and you became that person.

As long as we remember a person, they're not really gone. Their thoughts, their feelings, their memories, they become a part of us.

What strange places our lives can carry us to, what dark passages.