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.

The tension between 'yes' and no', between 'I can' and 'I cannot,' makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self.

Paranoids are the only ones who notice things anymore.

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.

The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.

People ... have no idea what a hard job it is for two writers to be friends. Sooner or later you have to talk about each other's work.

There are few things more subtly distressing than an inappropriate gift from someone close to you.