The best fiction stays with you and changes you.

When your fight has purpose - to free you from something, to interfere on the behalf of an innocent - it has a hope of finality. When the fight is about unraveling - when it is about your name, the places to which your blood is anchored, the attachment of your name to some landmark or event - there is nothing but hate, and the long, slow progression of people who feed on it and are fed it, meticulously, by the ones who come before them. Then the fight is endless, and comes in waves and waves, but always retains its capacity to surprise those who hope against it.

In the mess of moving from place to place, I skipped two grades in the space of one year.

A lot of writers that I know have told me that the first book you write, you write about your childhood, whether you want to or not. It calls you back.

death should be celebrated...when you put something in the ground you always know where it is

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.

I've always written about animals. I'm still trying to process why that is.