You can step in the same river but the water will always be new.

Not being published would be great. When I say that to other writers they look at me as if I'm totally insane.

When you chopped logs with the ax and they split open they smelled beautiful, like Christmas. But when you split someone's head open it smelled like abattoir and quite overpowered the scent of the wild lilacs you'd cut and brought into the house only this morning, which was already another life.

Alternate history fascinates me, as it fascinates all novelists, because 'What if?' is the big thing.

Oh, God. What was happening to her, she was turning into a normal person.

I spent four years doing a doctorate in postmodern American literature. I can recognize it when I see it.

It wasn't that [he] believed in religion, or a God, or an afterlife. He just knew it was impossible to feel this much love and for it to end.