I pray for meaning. I pray for the limits of reality to become clear. For a world – and a type of being – that makes sense. I pray for a life after death that is not like this life. I pray for the end of mystery. What would a life be like with all the mysteries solved? If there were no questions, there’d be no stories. If there were no stories, there’d be no language. If there was no language there’d be no . . . What?

One of the biggest problems for beginning writers is this need to over-explain.

Homeopathy seemed . . . both mathematical and poetic.

Everything I know I imagine everyone else knows as well. And then everything that everyone else knows I imagine they know on top of what I know, so I'm constantly anxious about what everyone else knows.

I think about stories and their logic and wonder if there can be any such thing as simply "there is a book.

I erased the thought from my mind, but I couldn't undo the fact that I'd had the thought in the first place.

You can't do science in a novel, but you can do philosophy. Or, if you're really lucky, you can manage to pose a question in such a way that other people will take it on.