It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn't wait to leave.

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

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.

It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn't wait to leave.

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.

I feel about lending a book the way most fathers feel about their daughters living with a man out of wedlock.

A book is meant not only to be read, but to haunt you, to importune you like a lover or a parent, to be in your teeth like a piece of gristle.