But if there was embellishment, it only had to do with the facts.

I think one of the most fertile, unexplored areas for poets and fiction writers is the world of science. I become overwhelmed by the science world.

You really need to approach each book as if you have been a failure. . . . If you start to believe your flap-copy, you're finished as a writer.

What is this life but the sound of an appalling love.

I have brothers and was a tomboy, if that's still a designation. It wasn't a stretch for me to think and write as a 13-year-old boy - it is freeing.

Cold sinks in, there to stay. And people, they'll leave you, sure. There's no return to what was and no way back. There's just emptiness all around, and you in it, like singing up from the bottom of a well, like nothing else, until you harm yourself, until you are a mad dog biting yourself for sympathy. Because there is no relenting.

It is easy to take away the world that we think is so permanent and reliable.