The real past can traumatize us, but so can the real future.

Toronto is hard to capture in a few strokes.

Paranoia can be a sign of a sanity in some circumstances, in some places and times.

Absurdity isn't quite so absurd as it once was.

I just write what I want to read, and sometimes keeping it interesting means adding one more element that ends up adding another year to the work.

I love poetry, read it a lot, but make no claim to being able to write it.

The idea that language can be recombined to create new forms, new things, is of course very old in poetry.

We're getting used to reality and fantasy passing into each other. Much of the border between them has been erased.

It's fiction's job to express how it feels to be living now, and it's a complex feeling, full of contradiction. To me it often feels like a brutal trivialization of reality.

I seem always to have two or three novels going at once. It takes me a long time to finish one.

We want to know that we're not alone with our loneliness or loss.

On the shining yards of heavenSee a wider dawn unfurled. . . . The eternal slaves of beautyAre the masters of the world.

The point is, every book we had could save us in a different way -- only, we had to open it. We had to drop our eyes to the page and drink in the words that were there.

People love to help. I don't have to be insecure and know it all.

A lot of people have said that I've got a voice that speaks to children. I think I've got a natural naivety to me. I'm childish.

That best academy, a mother's knee.

All occasions invite His mercies, and all times are His seasons.

When I say that I love you, I don't say it out of habit or to make conversation. I say it to remind you that you're the best thing that's ever happened to me.

When you make something that everyone likes, it's very easy to say, "Well, I'll just repeat that." Because that was easy. I have a formula. But creatively, it's not very interesting.

I'm comfortable, but not satisfied and I hope to always feel that way.

Men are apt to offend ('tis true) where they find most goodness to forgive.