Perhaps he was a fool, but he thought that if a work were truly great you would only have to read it once and you would be stolen from yourself, desperately moved, changed forever.

There is justice in the world, Peter Lake, but it cannot be had without mystery.

Writing is still my main career, but I would love, for instance, to serve in the New York State Assembly.

There's an expression in Yiddish, which is "der gelernte naar" - a "learned fool." You can know a great deal, you can have a Ph.D., and you can still be a total idiot.

I'm sort of murdered for selling books. The idea is, if you make money your work can't be literary.

It's a defining difference, curiosity. I've never known a stupid person who was curious, or a curious person who was stupid.

Such a thing as the child left alone to die in the hallway was unknown on the marsh. But here, in the dawn, was mortality itself. In the city were places to fall from which one could never emerge -- dark dreams and slow death, the death of children, suffering without grace or redemption, ultimate and eternal loss. The memory of the child stayed with him. But that was not to be the end of it, for reality went around in a twisting ring. Even the irredeemable would be redeemed, and there was a balance for everything. There had to be.