The folks I read as a kid really set me up. I owe a huge debt to Ray Bradbury and Madeleine L'Engle.
The beginning of the end can feel a lot like the middle when you are living in it. 
But until we are old ladies- a cypress age, a Sawtooth age- I will continue to link arms with her, in public, in private, in a panic of love. 
How could you make a mistake when you had one option? 
I moved to New York with the derangement of love. I was writing all these terrible stories, but I had never been happier. 
The whistle dropped from the branch's spindly fingers like a black cocoon, a pendulum of secret music; the wind pushed sound soundlessly around. 
What passes for news is just morbid speculation or cartoonish screaming, followed by diaper commercials. 
(I was a fairy-minded kid, a comic book kid, and I had a bad habit of looking for augurs and protectors where there were none. 
I am extremely close to my brother, Kent, and my sister, Lauren, who have been remarkably understanding about all of my weird sibling tales. 
We met every morning, still bearded with toast crumbs from our continental breakfasts. 
Whatever song we are making in this place, we are going to die without hearing. 
It remains unbelievable to me that I have any readers beyond my own blood relations - it's a crazy, wild gift. 
If you're short on time, that would be the two-word version of our story: we fell. 
I had to explain to him Mom's death, which was always hard to do. It felt like killing her again. 
Raffy has this magical, abracadabrical ability to transform all his "ifs" into "whens". 
Don't look back, you asshole! he thought. Good advice, from Orpheus to Lot. 
He tried to scrub children's vomit from the webbing of the Tongue in a way that suggested deep reservoirs of genius. 
People are symptoms of dreams 
Once you figure out what's best for the story, take out the rest. 
Fiction helps me to reconnect with the true, deep weirdness inherent in everyday reality, in our dealings with one another, in just being alive. 
I often felt myself to be an outsider, which is great training for all writers. 
I spent most of my 20s with these alligator wrestlers in the swamps of South Florida. 
I often think, that she foresaw only the end times, never hot dogs. 
THE ALLIGATOR IS AN ANACHRONISM THAT CAN EAT YOU! 
I haf the sownd of more words butt i coud not remember the shaps of the letters. 
If you're gonna do something weird, just have one thing be weird. 
A food truce, the picnic suspension of oedipal feeling that permits the generations to love each other at family reunions. 
You small mortals don't realize the power of your stories. 
My older sister has entire kingdoms inside of her, and some of them are only accessible at certain seasons, in certain kinds of weather. 
For me, the term "literary fiction" means there's always attention paid to language, and linguistic experimentation, sophistication. 
It's funny, for a long time I would go watermelon-red and deny that I was a magical realist. It felt imprecise to me, a misrepresentation. 
Being unconscious with somebody, that's a big deal. 
Words, I guess, are her more durable artifacts. 
The girl has a funny way of romanticizing things. 
Nal had begun to sense that his life had jumped the rails - and then right at his nadir, he'd agreed to an "avant" haircut performed by Cousin Steve. 
His words hung around, too, leaving their brain stain on the air. 
Regret is a pilgrimage back to the place where I was free to choose. 
Music is pleasant not only because of the sound of many voices,but because of the silence that is in it.
You don't want people to think you're just writing stories for children about a pig in a tutu. 
the gravity of wound to fist 
I want a real encounter with something true and disconcerting about peoples' natures. 
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. 
There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction. 
This new happiness had angles. Happiness like his was real; it had a jewel-cut shadow, and he could lose it. 
You can always put balsamic vinaigrette on salted meat and sort of pretend it's a salad. 
My mom says I'm destined to be the sort of man who uses big words but pronounces them incorrectly. 