No matter how grave the secret, how imperative absolute silence, someone would always feel the urge to confess, and an unleashed secret is a terrible force.

My mother always says that fear and pain are immediate, and that, when they're gone we're left with the concept, but not the true memory.

Come on, is your heart a sponge or a fist?

I like dark subject matter. I'm not sure what that means about me!

Suddenness," he says. " You do not prepare, you do not explain, you do not apologize. Suddenly, you go. And with you, you take all contemplation, all consideration of your own departure. All the suffering that would have come from knowing comes after you are gone, and you are not a part of it.

When you're in a place, the details you focus on are different than details you focus on when you're writing about it.

You never know what's going to happen in your life, and you never know what's going to happen in someone else's life either.