It's just so out of control. Life, I mean. The way it flies off in all these different directions without your permission.

I wanted to be free to write the way I wanted to write, and my impression of Christian publishing, at least in fiction, was that there wasn't room for what I wanted to write.

Other memories stick, no matter how much you wish they wouldn’t. They’re like a song you hate but can’t ever get completely out of your head, and this song becomes the background noise of your entire life, snippets of lyrics and lines of music floating up and then receding, a crazy kind of tide that never stops.

You were never what I wanted to forget.

I remember being in high school and listening to Vivaldi's 'Winter' and being so overwhelmed with emotion.

I played the clarinet, and my sister played the violin... If wed had the discipline and the passion, maybe we could have been good.

We'd need a miracle," he says. "A real one. Do you think those happen anymore?