I didn’t realize that one tragedy can beget another, and another — bright-eyed disasters flooding out of a death hole like bats out of a cave.

I want a real encounter with something true and disconcerting about peoples' natures.

It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity.

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

I didn’t realize that one tragedy can beget another, and another — bright-eyed disasters flooding out of a death hole like bats out of a cave.

What passes for news is just morbid speculation or cartoonish screaming, followed by diaper commercials.

In a way, I think we all want to look to that journalistic voice as a kind of global omniscience, a big eye to correct for our own limited purview: "Here's a realistic accounting of the world in which we live."