Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected, how one decision leads you another, how one twist of fate, good or bad, brings you to a door that later takes you to another door, which aided by several detours--long hallways and unforeseen stairwells--eventually puts you in the place you are now.

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

I don't write for an audience, I don't think whether my book will sell, I don't sell it before I finish writing it.

Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something.

Updike and Bellow and Roth were my three favorite writers when I was young and throughout my life.

I decided to make my living as a magazine writer. And I found that it was really easy and fun.

He believed that life, true life, was something that was stored in music. True life was kept safe in the lines of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin while you went out in the world and met the obligations required of you. Certainly he knew (though did not completely understand) that opera wasn't for everyone, but for everyone he hoped there was something. The records he cherished, the rare opportunities to see a live performance, those were the marks by which he gauged his ability to love.