Hug and kiss whoever helped get you - financially, mentally, morally, emotionally - to this day. Parents, mentors, friends, teachers. If you're too uptight to do that, at least do the old handshake thing, but I recommend a hug and a kiss. Don't let the sun go down without saying thank you to someone, and without admitting to yourself that absolutely no one gets this far alone.

Her body was wrapped in shadows like moth wings, like rose-petals.

After the 9/11 apocalypse happened in New York City, people, particularly New Yorkers, who breathed in the ash, or saw the results of that, have a tendency to keep seeing echoes and having flashbacks to it.

Most people are optimists, although they may claim they are not. People who call themselves realists are often the biggest optimists of all.

The dream might have been more than a dream. It was as if a door in the wall of reality had come ajar... and now all sorts of unwelcome things were flying through.

I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.

Sometimes stories cry out to be told in such loud voices that you write them just to shut them up.