Men choose Hamlet because every man sees himself as a disinherited monarch. Women choose Alice [in Wonderland] because every woman sees herself as the only reasonable creature among crazy people who think they are disinherited monarchs.

In bookstores, my stuff is usually filed in the out-of-the-way, additional interest sections.

I rush to add that I find the Web infinitely useful for rustling up information, settling arguments or locating the legends of rock stars.

Of all the alchemies of human connection-sex and childbirth and marriage and friendship-the strangest is this: You can stand up and tell a story that is made entirely, embarrassingly, of "I's," and a listening audience somehow turns each "I" into a "me." This alchemy, of self-absorption into shared experience, is the alchemy of all literature.

If you're being attacked from all sides, it's possible you're doing something right; it's also possible that you are doing everything wrong.

Paris, on the other hand, looked exactly as it was supposed to look. It wore its heart on its sleeve, and the strange thing was that the heart it wore so openly was in other ways so closed-mysterious, uninviting.

New York has always been a place where it is possible to have memories without the experience that conventionally precede them.