I made a startling discovery. Time spent writing = output of work. Amazing.

When you get divorced and remarried, nobody gets discarded. Everybody is still there. Even if their storyline is not directly yours.

The tricky thing about being a writer, or about being any kind of artist, is that in addition to making art you also have to make a living.

To say it was a beautiful day would not begin to explain it. It was that day when the end of summer intersects perfectly with the start of fall .... [p.218 ff.]

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.

In this life we love who we love. There were some stories in which facts were very nearly irrelevant.

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