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

There are moments when you can only stand and stare, watching the world forget you as you remove yourself from it - when you overcome it and cease to exist as the person you were.

It felt as though the whole globe was dressed in snow. Like it has pulled it on, the way you pull on a sweater. Next to the train line, footprints were sunken to their shins. Trees wore blankets of ice. As you may expect, someone has died.

Clearly," said Arthur,"you're an idiot- but you're our kind of idiot. Come on.

He killed himself for wanting to live.

Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are.

The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder. They breathed. German and Jewish lungs.