an inner-city, working-class kid.

I have a lot of rage about things that didn't happen to me, tied up with watching an immigrant, working-class father struggle to make his way through the world - and seeing how society was modeled to keep him in his place.

There are so many more important things to worry about than how you're perceived by strangers.

I believe so deeply in the primacy of language, in lifting your prose to the highest level you're capable of and making your words symphonic.

Teddy wondered, and not for the first time, not by a long shot, if this was the day that missing her would finally be too much for him.

Patrick Kenzie asking a bemused waitress for a newspaper in smalltown USA. 'It’s like a homepage without a scroll button?