You don’t want to ask after the health of anyone, if you’re a funeral director. They think maybe you’re scouting for business.

We save our lives in such unlikely ways.

Here you go, she said. I don't need it anymore. I'm very grateful. I think it may have saved my life, saved some other people's death.

Whatever's happening," she said, eventually, "it can all be sorted out." She saw the expression on my face then, worried. Scared even. And she said, "After pancakes.

I'm a fairly undisciplined writer.

People kill what they fear. They burned, and drowned, and hanged those they saw as witches, the devil's servants: the wise women and the cunning men, the unfortunate, the lost and the strange

For a moment he thought she was about to hit him, which would have been bad, or even start crying, which would have been much, much worse.