The Statue of Liberty is meant to be shorthand for a country so unlike its parts that a trip from California to Indiana should require a passport.

You teach your 16-year-old with your heart in your mouth to be a good driver and none of that makes any difference when some drunk comes around a corner and runs a stop sign.

At the same time that you've got to open yourself up to the fact that experience is going to teach you year after year, decade after decade. I remember I very badly wanted to write a newspaper column when I was only 21 years old, and I went to my editor and told him that, and he said, "You're a really good writer, but you haven't lived long enough to be qualified to live out loud."

It would take a helluva man to replace no man at all.

Novels are usually built on conflict, sometimes very, very difficult conflict. It's why men write war novels - because there you go, there's the conflict writ large.

I had that feeling you have when you're watching a sad movie, sobbing at the heartbreak you are feeling at the same time that you know the heartbreak isn't exactly real, that it will be gone by the time you get home and make a cup of tea. I found a lot of life like that when I was younger, as though I was practicing for what came later.

I only really understand myself, what I'm really thinking and feelings, when I've talked it over with my circle of female friends. When days go by without that connection, I feel like a radio playing in an empty room.