I didn’t realize that one tragedy can beget another, and another — bright-eyed disasters flooding out of a death hole like bats out of a cave.

The beginning of the end can feel a lot like the middle when you are living in it.

When you're a kid, it's hard to tell the innocuous secrets from the ones that will kill you if you keep them.

Fiction helps me to reconnect with the true, deep weirdness inherent in everyday reality, in our dealings with one another, in just being alive.

It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity.

My older sister has entire kingdoms inside of her, and some of them are only accessible at certain seasons, in certain kinds of weather.

I spent most of my 20s with these alligator wrestlers in the swamps of South Florida.

It is a special kind of homelessness to be evicted from your dreams.

Self-disciplin e is necessary, but so is playfulness, flexibility, joy. When you stop demanding perfection of yourself, your writing desk will become a spacious place.

There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction.

You small mortals don't realize the power of your stories.

You will only become significant in life, by solving the unique set of problems only you and your mission are meant to solve.

I like raunchiness, not like in a biker-chick sort of a way, but like the girl can't help it. Little bruises, a few hairs out of place, a little stain here and there.

It's a process of getting to know people. That's what photography is to me. It's about paying attention, not screwing up and blowing a great opportunity.

All the doctrines that have flourished in the world about immortality have hardly affected man's natural sentiment in the face of death.

When one has tasted watermelons, one knows what angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took; we know it because she repented.

For everything that God desires to do in the earth, He enters into partnership with those to whom He has already given dominion.

Dear gentlemen, let me die a natural death.

The devil does not tempt unbelievers and sinners who are already his own.

Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment.