Sometimes you can do things for others that you can't do for yourself.

You really can't write well if you're thinking about what the reviewers might say.

I'm very interested in compassion - compassion for oneself and others. I write about very complicated characters and experiences and try to do it without judging the character or the action.

I liked the fact she understood how we all have little secret habits that seem normal enough to us, but which we know better than to mention out loud.

Birthday parties make me nervous as hell. They're one of those things where you're forced to be happy. And even if you're totally depressed, you're got to pretend you're glad you were born, regardless of the fact that getting older means you're closer to dying.

It's my policy not to review funerals.

Philip Galanes makes his debut with a novel that is both heartbreaking and deftly comic, the story of a young man struggling with his most primitive desires--wanting and needing. It is a novel about the complex relationships between parents and children, a story of loss and of our unrelenting need for acknowledgment, to be seen as who we are. And in the end it is simply a love story for our time.