The epic implications of being human end in more than this: We start our lives as if they were momentous stories, with a beginning, a middle and an appropriate end, only to find that they are mostly middles.

There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience.

In novels, I said, people are transfigured by love. They’re elevated, made different, lifted out of their ordinariness…It’s not so much to ask, I said. I just want love to live up to its publicity.

The more I like a book, the more reluctant I am to turn the page. Lovers, even book lovers, tend to cling. No one-night stands or "reads" for them.

The first divorce in the world may have been a tragedy, but the hundred-millionth is not necessarily one.

When friends stop being frank and useful to each other, the whole world loses some of its radiance.

There is something about seeing real people on a stage that makes a bad play more intimately, more personally offensive than any other art form.