The darkness is really out there. It's not something that's in my head, just. It's in my work because it's in the world.

How furious she must be, now that she's been taken at her word.

Every novel is-at the beginning-the same opening of a door onto a completely unknown space.

When we're young, we like happy endings. When we're a little older, we think happy endings are unrealistic and so we prefer bad but credible endings. When we're older still, we realize happy endings aren't so bad after all.

Soon it will be daybreak. Soon the day will break. I can't stop it from breaking in the same way it always does, and then from lying there broken; always the same day, which comes around again like clockwork. It begins with the day before the day before, and then the day before, and then it's the day itself. A Saturday. The breaking day. The day the butcher comes.

History, as I recall, was never this winsome, and especially not this clean, but the real thing would never sell: most people prefer a past in which nothing smells.

You think I'm not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn.