The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more.

What?" It was a good word. Like a rock in a river, sticking up to let you land on it, so you could make your way across the flow.

Love is an obsolete emotion, ranking in usefulness somewhere between earwigs and toe mold.

Imagination is the golden-eyed monster that never sleeps. It must be fed; it cannot be ignored.

But even in the schoolyard I'd been aware of that silence, that reserve in him, as though he'd been raised by foxes and language was his second language.

Content, it dreams awake, and spins the fabric of tales. There is really nothing to be done with such imagery except to use it: in writing, in art.

All I wanted, even when I hated you most, was some poor, barren, parched excuse to love you. But you only gave me riddles.