I know that when a supersexy older girl with hips and breasts and nice hair wants to take off your glasses and to paint you a smoky eye she's merely trying to enroll you in a beauty contest she's already won. It's a kind of slummy, condescending gesture, like when rich people ask poor people where they summer. To me, this smacks of a blatant, insensitive "let them eat cake" type of chauvinism.

The damaged love the damaged. True fact.

You’re training a new employee,' says Mrs. Clark, 'to take over your boring old job.' When you raise a child.

As the child outlives the father,so must the character bury the author.

You know that old phrase ‘Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it’? Well, I think those who remember the past are even worse off.

Ideas come at any moment -- except when you demand them. Most ideas come while I'm physically active, at the gym, with friends, gardening, so I always carry pen and paper. My first draft is always written in longhand. But once the first dozen chapters, more like short stories, are written, then momentum builds until I can't leave the project until it's done.

This was freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.