There's literary creation and literary business. When I first got something accepted, it gave my life a validation it didn't otherwise have.

A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.

I'm always learning something. Learning never ends.

My heart is broken,” she goes. “It’s turned to a piece of stone. I’m no good. That’s what’s as bad as anything, that I’m no good anymore.

This is awful. I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world.

She serves me a piece of it a few minutes out of the oven. A little steam rises from the slits on top. Sugar and spice - cinnamon - burned into the crust. But she's wearing these dark glasses in the kitchen at ten o'clock in the morning - everything nice - as she watches me break off a piece, bring it to my mouth, and blow on it. My daughter's kitchen, in winter. I fork the pie in and tell myself to stay out of it. She says she loves him. No way could it be worse.

In short, everything about his life was different for him at the bottom of that well.