I think that writers have natural canvases, and my canvas, even in short stories, often seems to be the scope of a life.

As a person, I do ascribe to a lot of magical thinking myself.

In the end, fiction is the craft of telling truth through lies.

While writing, writers are living inside a character or characters, and when the book ekes into the world, writers are living inside the reader. That's more than connecting.

Amor animi arbitrio sumitu, non ponitur; we choose to love; we do not choose to cease loving.

Who, in the midst of passion, is vigilant against illness? Who listens to the reports of recently decimated populations in Spain, India, Bora Bora, when new lips, tongues and poems fill the world?

If there's a black cat that crosses the street in my path, I will turn around and walk 20 minutes out of my way to not cross it.

Depressing thought: my friends were the girls I ate lunch with, all buddies from kindergarten who knew one another so well we weren't sure if we even liked one another anymore.

Sometimes you have to let time carry you past your troubles.

I'm a private person, a shy person. Sometimes, reading for eleven hours straight feels to me like the perfect way to spend a day.

I love Twitter. It's like having a closet full of clever friends that you can visit twice a day, then shove back into the darkness when you're tired of them.

I know you exist not just because your eyes flyand give light to things like an open window

...we went to watch the waves that bitter day and the wind took your red cap and mittens - blew them into the sea...

You don't know it... but you can play dumb - right!?

They can have my beer when they pry it out of my cold, dead hand.

In Africa, music is for everything, Music was originally used for community. That was what music was for.

How did the rose ever open its heart and give to this world all of its beauty? It felt the encouragement of Light against its being; otherwise we all remain too frightened.

Every night before bed, I rub my wife's feet. She says they're the best foot rubs on Earth.

You, too, can be carved anew by the details of your devotion.

On daytime they continue to revisit a lot of the same stuff while nighttime does move on and show development.