When I knew I was going to be able to write full time, I wondered, "What's going to happen to the relationships within my family?" Are they going to change? Is it going to be the kind of deal where you say, "I can't take this! Get me out of here! I can't stand these screaming kids!" The way it turned out was, I was able to change the diapers okay, after I stuck the pin through my fingers a few times. I had a dawning realization that children are not particularly hard to deal with.

Now I think all of us were born with a hole in our hearts, and we go around looking for the person who can fill it. You... you fill me up.

And that almost killed you?" "It wasn't deep but it got infected. Infection means that the bad germs got into it. Infection's the most dangerous thing there is, Tom. Infection was what made the superflu germ kill all the people. And infection is what made people want to make the germ in the first place. An infection of the mind.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

It's hard to make strangers care about the good things in your life.

If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die.

The past is obdurate. It doesn't want to change.