Every atom in me feels composed of lead. This is what dying is: a pull to the ground.

How does one craft happiness out of something as important, as complicated, as unrepeatable and as easily damaged as life?

A small town is nothing but eyes and gaping maw; it pecks at its own like a flock of vicious birds.

She doesn't understand that doors, walls, fences, ceilings - they're helpless to keep out what determinedly desires to get in.

More than this, I believe that the only lastingly important form of writing is writing for children. It is writing that is carried in the reader's heart for a lifetime; it is writing that speaks to the future.

I am dying: it's a beautiful word. Like the long slow sigh of the cello: dying. But the sound of it is the only beautiful thing about it.

I suppose that's what happens when you make other people's lives miserable: life gets miserable back at you.