“I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very early age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out. ”

“The child, screaming for refuge, senses how feeble a shelter the twig hut of grown-up awareness is. They claim strength, these parents, and complete sanctuary. The weeping earth itself knows how de...”

“I knew what he felt. The huge buoyant air sack of love that filled his body had just exploded and the collapse was devastating.”

“I know that some of the finest writing I've ever read has been sports writing, whatever the topic was, whatever the sport they were writing about. It seems to be an area where people are allowed a ...”

“'The Iliad' includes some snappy sports reporting, and writers ever since have been probing athletes for signifiers, for metaphor amped by grit under pressure.”

“Prior to penicillin and medical research, death was an everyday occurrence. It was intimate.”

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of wi...”

“My dear,Find what you love and let it kill you.Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.Let it kill you and let it devour your remains....”

“If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?”

“Theres no way you can kill someone and get to the other side of the experience unchanged.”

“Why do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled enemy?”

“He had also learned that there is no use murdering people; there are always so many left, and if you tried to murder them all you would never get anything else done.”