“A novel must show how the world truly is, how characters genuinely think, how events actually occur. A novel should somehow reveal the true source of our actions.”

“Life had given me another sucker punch. I should have been used to it. I should have already known what was happening and what would happen. How it felt to be in the dark hole that was death.”

“I fantasized how no matter what happened, no one could ever come between us, call it wishful thinking, I called it a fact.”

“Life is a ride that we take, sometimes with a passenger, other timesall alone. How you bounce back from life tells a lot about you as aperson. Some people fight to the death, others are more a part of deathand never truly understand why this is so……”

“We sat in silence for a while. I gazed through the window at the night sky, wondering idly at all that space, all that blackness, all that nothing, and as I sat there looking up at the emptiness I began thinking about the creek, the hills, the woods, the water... how everything goes around and around and never really changes. How life recycles everything it uses. How the end product of one process becomes the starting point of another, how each generation of living things depends on the chemicals released by the generations that have proceeded it... I don't know why I was thinking about it. It just seemed to occur to me.”

“Great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings about what they mean. A good novel of any year can initiate us into our own new experience.”

“It’s always funny watching something so beautiful not know how beautiful it really is. It’s sad even.”