The problem with love and God, the two of them, is how to say anything about them that doesn’t annihilate them instantly with the wrong words, with untruth. . . . In this sense, love and God are equivalents. We feel both, but because we cannot speak clearly about them, we end up–wordless, inarticulate—by denying their existence altogether, and, pfffffft, they die.

Try to get your characters into interesting trouble. Allow your characters to misbehave. Let them stay out after 11.

In truth, there are only two realities: the one for people who are in love or love each other, and the one for people who are standing outside all that.

Gainfully unemployed, very proud of it, too.

What a midwesterner he was, a thoroughly unhip guy with his heart in the usual place, on the sleeve, in plain sight.

If you want to see the consequences of ideas, write a story. If you want to see the consequences of belief, write a story in which somebody is acting on the ideas or beliefs that she has.

There is no weather in malls.