“I hear what many of you are saying: We don’t have the time, we are busy. Well Nobody Has Time, Everyone Is Busy. In the time it took you to read this post, your life just got a minute shorter. That is precisely why we read (and why some of us write): because life is short and finite, we want more, and literature is the distillation of all those lives we will not lead.”

“Everyone in the South has no time for reading because they are all too busy writing.”

“We have a finite amount of time. Whether short or long, it doesn’t matter. Life is to be lived”

“You can’t live your life thinking death is going to come all the time. You have to live life and if it comes, then we can only hope we were able to do all the things we wanted. He has to want to do something. Everyone does.”

“What is literature, and why do I try to write about it? I don’t know. Likewise, I don’t know why I go on living, most of the time. But this not knowing is precisely what I want to preserve. As readers, the closest way we can engage with a literary work is to protect its indeterminacy; to return ourselves and it to a place that precludes complete recognition. Really, when I’m reading, all I want is to stand amazed in front of an unknown object at odds with the world.”

“I want you to remember this—you and I are in this life together. All the way. We don’t run just because we get sacked a few times.”