More than anything, Natalie wanted to move to the bed, take Sophie’s hand, sit beside her.Lay her head against her shoulder. But she didn’t dare. Or maybe just couldn’t. Fear. Friendship. Desire. Regret. Remorse. Longing....

Every single one of them with their eyes open and on him, their mouths, too, halfway screaming, halfway begging. Offering themselves to him, because the call was irresistible despite being recognizable. They were moths who...

Drifting on the black, rippling surface were fingers. Thumbs. Dozens of them. Hundreds, floating like dead fish in a dynamited pond. I saw part of an ear. The lights went out.

So much of reading and writing to me is about being elsewhere, no matter how much I love where I am.

Every time I fall in love with a book, I just feel grateful and thrilled to have it in my life.

The fever, I realized, had gone. Beneath my feet, the hardwood floor felt cool on my feet, the air gentle against my itching legs. This was just the world, after all. Big, thoroughly mapped place...

The ghosts that exert the most power in people’s lives-at least, the people I know–tend to be of their own making, and consist of equal parts regret and old fears and just plain missing somebody.

…I’ve never understood the logic that says a work doesn’t need to be judged on the quality of its writing or characters simply because its genre. On the other hand, I’ve also never understood the...

Love the work: the grind, the dreaming, the distracted not-sleep, all of it. It’s the one thing in the job that will always be there, and the real pleasure in the profession. Everything else is...

I’m a husband, a father of two, a full-time teacher, and so my writing process mostly involves sitting down and writing, any chance I get, anywhere I am, for as long as life will let...

Great work doesn’t make me jealous; it makes me want to work.