We accept the need to train extensively to fly a plane; but think instinct should be enough for marrying and raising kids.

What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.

Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our own.

We tend to believe in the modern secular world that if you tell someone something once, they'll remember it. ... Religions go, "Nonsense. You need to keep repeating the lesson 10 times a day. So get on your knees and repeat it." That's what all religions tell us: "Get on your knees and repeat it 10 or 20 or 15 times a day." Otherwise our minds are like sieves.

I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay rather than the novel.

The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.

The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.