I hum some secret place into being, thinking of this other me, the one that only I can see, a girl called She, who is not We, a girl who I will never be.

Write,' she said, 'as if you'll never be read. That way you'll be sure to tell the truth.

When you stand outside, you look around and find that the people you're with live on the fringes.

I feel, holding books, accommodating their weight and breathing their dust, an abiding love. I trust them, in a way that I can't trust my computer, though I couldn't do without it. Books are matter. My books matter. What would I have done through these years without the library and all its lovely books?

The strangest thing about strange things is that they're only strange when you hear about them or think about them later, but never when you're living them.

We're seeing a decline in religion in North America but, I hope, a rise in individual spirituality. Whatever that means to people.

If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars though they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead.