Inside I feel much like a 12-year-old or a 17-year-old who knows big words.

...his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered.

you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty.

I did not set out to write another novel. One day I sat down with the thought of trying my hand at a piece of nonfiction, a personal memoir of youth, but over the next several weeks, without intending it, the work began evolving into what has become 'Tomcat in Love.

Let the story tell itself.

Writing doesn’t get easier with experience. The more you know, the harder it is to write.

There was the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry.