I am not my childhood,' Snowman says out loud.

To want is to have a weakness.

I became a poet at the age of sixteen. I did not intend to do it. It was not my fault.

we lived in the gaps between the stories

My family was big on sharing. I guess it was just the way I was brought up. Or maybe, I read those fairy tales in which one good turn elicits another. But in writing, yes, some older writers were kind to me when I was young; although some others were not.

Americans don't usually have to think about Canadian-American relations, or, as they would put it, American-Canadian relations. Why think about something which you believe affects you so little? We, on the other hand, have to think about you whether we like it or not.

War is what happens when language fails.