The closest thing to an outline is, because my memory is so bad now, if something occurs to me that I think might be important or pivotal, a lot of times I'll scribble notes down somewhere until I can get back to the book. Of course half the time I look at those notes the next morning and think, "What was that about?"

Guilt is what separates humans from animals.

And yet we constantly reclaim some part of that primal spontaneity through the youngest among us, not only through their sorrow and anger but simply through everyday discoveries, life unwrapped. To see a child touch the piano keys for the first time, to watch a small body slice through the surface of the water in a clean dive, is to experience the shock, not of the new, but of the familiar revisited as though it were strange and wonderful.

I don't really read what people write about me. Someone gives my novel one star; are they a troll? Are they someone who hates my politics and so has decided to do that?

There is only room in the lifeboat of your life for one, and you always choose yourself, and turn your parents into whatever it takes to keep you afloat.

If you want something, it will elude you. If you do not want something, you will get ten of it in the mail.

There is a lot of talk now about metal detectors and gun control. Both are good things. But they are no more a solution than forks and spoons are a solution to world hunger.