It's my policy not to review funerals.

I once jokingly told someone that every book is like a relationship. They're four or five years long - that's not so bad. They're serious. They demand a lot of attention. But I remember thinking that I wanted to have one with someone who's not so crazy and peculiar and demanding.

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.

The struggle is how to write optimistically when the world we're living in is not inherently optimistic. I love the idea of the family from the most Norman Rockwell version to Norman Bates. Without family, we have very little - it is the most basic social structure. So yes I suppose I wanted to write a hopeful book about the evolution of the family.

Was this the big one or was this the small tremor, the warning? Does it get better - does the sensation of being in a dream underwater go away?

People should pay more attention. Everyone wants attention, but no one wants to give attention.

My mind leaps to my theory about presidents - that there are two kinds, ones who have a lot of sex and the others who start wars. In short - and don't quote me, because this is an incomplete expression of a more complex premise - I believe blow jobs prevent war.