He was one of those rare men who are capable of being fully in love only once in their lives.

It’s the great surprise of my life that I ended up loving [my father] so much.

Love had always issued out of the places that hurt the most.

The words “I love you” could contain all the bloodthirsty despair of the abattoir, all the hopelessness of the most isolated, frozen gulag, all the lurid sadness of death row.

When we cuss each other out, call each other the vilest names on earth, and put each other down with thoughtless cruelty, it is the only way we know and the only language we have to express our ardent love for each other.

Moonrise is a fabulous novel and my damn wife wrote it and that’s me up there near Highlands shouting it out to the hills.

I would love to see young writers come out of college and know there is a possibility to be a novelist.