A woman who surrenders her freedom need not surrender her dignity.

I love revising. If you demystify the process, it comes down to four strategies: what can I do to make the draft better; what should I cut out to make it stronger; what do I need to do to clarify it; and finally, what should I reposition.

Religion's just a well-oiled profit-driven denial of the randomness of it all.

Human behavior in the midst of hardship caught my attention very early on, and my first stories were all pictures, no words.

So many bad things have happened to them that they can't trust the good things. They have to shove them away before someone can get it back.

I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family's, and my country's past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things. This much, at least, I've figured out. I know this much is true.

Connecticut is in my blood.