"Working with Tom over the years has been one of the great pleasures of my life. This is a perfect novel: completely conceptually rigorous and a great story."

"I read a lot of poetry and have spent many years trying to get beyond Stevens and my obsession with his late verse in particular. But I can’t."

"I reread this book every few years to remind myself about the human necessity for family, the searing pain of betrayal and the cleansing power of being good."

"There was a poet named Humbert Wolfe that nobody had ever heard of — his books I discovered in a second-hand bookstore — that I loved through the years."

"I saw this when I was maybe twelve years old. The father’s suicide, the dead guy in the tree—images that bothered me for decades. Chop that meat."

"It just makes me feel right, I listen to it every game for the last 4 years. It's probably my theme music when I walk into a game."