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.

Ruefulness is one of the classical tones of American fiction. It fosters a native, deglamorized form of anxiety.

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

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.

The more I like a book, the more slowly I read. this spontaneous talking back to a book is one of the things that makes reading so valuable.

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.

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.