The job of the writer is to look at where he is now and make some sort of emotional sense of it, not only for that moment but for years to come.

Part of the beauty of fiction is that we come alive in a body that we don't own.

Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.

...it was necessary to love silence, but before you could love silence you had to have noise.

The war was about vanity, he said. It was about old men who couldn't look in the mirror anymore and so they sent the young out to die. Was was a get-together of the vain. They wanted it simple--hate your enemy, know nothing of him.

Long ago, long ago. The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward.

One of those out-of-the-ordinary days that made sense of the slew of ordinary days. New York had a way of doing that. Every now and then the city shook its soul out. It assailed you with an image, or a day, or a crime, or a terror, or a beauty so difficult to wrap your mind around that you had to shake your head in disbelief.