The Dead Are Celebrated. The Dead Are

When Your Fight Has Purpose - To Free You From Something, To Interfere On The Behalf Of An Innocent - It Has A Hope Of Finality. When The Fight Is About Unraveling - When It Is About Your Name, The Places To Which Your Blood Is Anchored, The Attachment Of Your Name To Some Landmark Or Event - There Is Nothing But Hate, And The Long, Slow Progression Of People Who Feed On It And Are Fed It, Meticulously, By The Ones Who Come Before Them. Then The Fight Is Endless, And Comes In Waves And Waves, But Always Retains Its Capacity To Surprise Those Who Hope Against It.

Wash The Bones, Bring The Body, Leave The Heart Behind.

Everything Necessary To Understand My Grandfather Lies Between Two Stories: The Story Of The Tiger’s Wife, And The Story Of The Deathless Man. These Stories Run Like Secret Rivers Through All The Other Stories Of His Life – Of My Grandfather’s Days In The Army; His Great Love For My Grandmother; The Years He Spent As A Surgeon And A Tyrant Of The University. One, Which I Learned After His Death, Is The Story Of How My Grandfather Became A Man; The Other, Which He Told To Me, Is Of How He Became A Child Again.

At The End Of The Day, Despite All The Other Great Things That Literature Does In Society And In A Person's Life, I Think That We Read To Escape. And I Think That Place, More Than Anything, Provides That Escape Quickly, If An Author Is Engaged With The Place.

A Family Has Its Own Rituals And Its Own Superstitions.