Sometimes if there's a book you really want to read, you have to write it yourself.

There are, of course, people who didn't create the trouble they're in, but lots of them do.

For a man to know what he has when he had it, that is what makes him a fortunate man.

Even though I didn't know I was applying for the job, I have somehow become the spokesperson for independent book stores.

My novels are very much the same, as I think many people's novels are. No matter how hard I try to do otherwise, the books always wind up being "a group of strangers are thrown together by circumstance and form a society."

Happiness compresses time, makes it dense and bright, pocketsized.

Maybe the private life wasn't forever. Maybe everyone got it for a little while and then spent the rest of their lives remembering.