Failure has been my best friend as a writer. It tests you, to see if you have what it takes to see it through.

It is early, early morning. It's that time when it's still dark but you know the day is coming. Blue is bleeding through black. Stars are dying.

You can do all manner of underhanded nice things when you have a caustic reputation.

Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.

She was a Jew feeder without a question in the world on that man's first night in Molching. She was an arm reacher, deep into a mattress, to deliver a sketchbook to a teenage girl. (84.25)

She gave 'The Dream Carrier' to Max as if words alone could nourish him.

If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter.