I am going to try to pay attention to the spring. I am going to look around at all the flowers, and look up at the hectic trees. I am going to close my eyes and listen.

I was raised in a family where none of us ever raised a voice, so there was no room to express feelings of rage or even unabashed joy - a little bashed joy, here or there, or being mildly disgruntled.

If you are a writer, or want to be a writer, this is how you spend your days--listening, observing, storing things away, making your isolation pay off. You take home all you've taken in, all that you've overheard, and you turn it into gold. (Or at least you try.)

I can never tell what I'm doing when I'm in the middle of publication because I have no confidence. I have terrible self-esteem, along with boundless narcissism.

If your wife locks you out of the house, you don't have a problem with your door.

Everybody thinks their opinion is the right one. If they didn't, they would get a new one.

I don't have any romantic views of parenting. Every step of the way it's really hard. It's a dangerous world, physically and psychologically.