I would love to travel around the world working for a travel company taking students abroad on cultural immersion trips.

I swim with all my strength. No superhuman surge, or pony heroics; it's just me at my most desperate.

I often felt myself to be an outsider, which is great training for all writers.

Pain collected into deep pockets and I was aware of this painbut somehow I could not seem to feel it. It was like a body-deafness.

I had been eagerly waiting just such a disaster. Storms, wolves, snakebite, floods-these are the occasions to find out how your father sees you, how strong and necessary he thinks you are.

The beginning of the end can feel a lot like the middle when you are living in it.

It's funny, for a long time I would go watermelon-red and deny that I was a magical realist. It felt imprecise to me, a misrepresentation.