People always talked about a mother's uncanny ability to read her children, but that was nothing compared to how children could read their mothers.

Mostly it's lies, writing novels. You set out to tell an untrue story and you try to make it believable, even to yourself. Which calls for details; any good lie does.

No couple buying wedding rings wants to be reminded that someday one of them will have to accept the other one's ring from a nurse or an undertaker.

When I'm working on something, I proceed as if no one else will ever read it.

Something was wrong with a world where people came and went so easily.

Odd how clear it suddenly became, once a person had died, that the body was the very least of him.

My cousin Roger once told me, on the eve of his third wedding, that he felt marriage was addictive. Then he corrected himself. I mean early marriage, he said. The very start of a marriage. It's like a whole new beginning. You're entirely brand-new people; you haven't made any mistakes yet. You have a new place to live and new dishes and this new kind of, like, identity, this 'we' that gets invited everywhere together now. Why, sometimes your wife will have a brand-new name, even.