When you're too close to people, when you spend too much time with them and love them too dearly, sometimes you can't see them

I love writing. I feel ridiculously lucky that this is what I get to do all day.

For a moment, I felt as if the universe had turned upside down and we were falling softly into an enormous black bowl of stars, and I knew, beyond any doubt, that everything was going to be alright.

We think about mortality so little, these days, except to flail hysterically at it with trendy forms of exercise and high-fiber cereals and nicotine patches.

I thought I could never write a proper book; I'd never done it before. But I thought I could write a sequence. Then I had a chapter. The next thing I knew I was turning acting down.

I came from a house full of books, so I took reading for granted. I was an outdoorsy little kid, too, so I got the best of both worlds by taking books up trees and reading there.

We think of mortality so little these days... I thought of the stern Victorian determination to keep death in mind, the uncompromising tombstones. Remember, pilgrim, as you pass by, As you are now so once was I: As I am so will you be.