Society was nothing but a long, dull dinner party conversation in which one was forced to speak to one's partner on both the left and the right.

You can’t pick up and leave everything behind because there is too much sadness in the world and not enough places to go.

Society was nothing but a long, dull dinner party conversation in which one was forced to speak to one's partner on both the left and the right.

My novels are very much the same, as I think many people's novels are.

Listen she said, everything ends, every single relationship you will ever have in your lifetime is going to end.... I'll die, you'll die, you'll get tired of each other. You don't always know how it's going to happen, but it is always going to happen. So stop trying to make everything permanent, it doesn't work. I want you to go out there and find some nice man you have no intention of spending the rest of your life with. You can be very, very happy with people you aren't going to marry.

I am sure every writer has this and probably every newscaster, that people are always coming up to me and saying, my daughter wants to do what you do, my godson, my tennis partner.

I believe that, more than anything else, this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself.