There's a hazy smile on her lips that won't go away, and her hair is a mess. It's like a brushfire filled with casualties.

I can almost see what Gabriel meant when he asked, 'What has the free world got that you can’t get here?' Almost. Freedom, Gabriel. That’s what you can’t get here.

Lovers are weapons, but love is a wound.

When I am writing anything in general, I just want to tell the story that exists in my head; I don't try to write a parable or make a point.

I should not have loved my daughter as I did. Not in this world in which nothing lives for long. You children are flies. You are roses. You multiply and die.

We figure out what death means when we're born, practically, and we live our whole lives in some kind of weird denial about it.

He says one word, nodding into the daylight. "Look." It's an astounding word. It's a gift.