I come from a newspaper background, so maybe I'm attuned to current events.

People expect a story to always mean the same thing, but I have found that stories change like people do.

Caroline was struck by just how close twenty-four feet really is, how little space really exists between us. Of course they were different, Lenny Ryan’s shooting of the pawnbroker, her own shooting of the wife beater. But that meant there was a difference between what Lenny Ryan did and what Kevin Verloc did, that in the end we are separated not by distance, but degree. And in that truth was another; none of us knows, in the tumble of events, what she is capable of doing.

Be confident and the world responds to your confidence, rewards your faith.

And when our lives do begin? I mean, the exacting part, the action? It’s all so fast.

Among the world’s evils – fascism, ethnic cleansing, environmental degradation – smoking deserves the most severe curricular attention in my kids’ school.

I think he came to believe it was better to choose your life, and that even choosing your death was better than letting someone else choose your life.

No, no, we are definitely writ on water. Or cognac – if we’ve any luck at all.

The stories tend to be what I work on when I’m stuck. Something will just pop into my head and I’ll think that’s more of a story.

Maybe it’s being close to the end, but I have this desire to pull Greg aside – to pull all my children aside, and my grandchildren – and to whisper something profound, to pass on the great wisdom I’ve acquired. Something that would open their hearts and create in them an unassailable courage, a generosity of spirit, faith in humanity.