Memory has a heavy backspin, yet it’s still impossible to land exactly where we took off.

Pain is not wat you get, it is wat you give.

I grew up sort of middle class, safe and suburban.

That's what sons do: write to their mothers about recall, tell themselves about the past until they come to realize that they are the past.

So much of her time spent like this: dreaming up things to say and never quite saying them.

Personally, I like the social novel. I like writing that gets in and under the hood and looks about - at what's going on. But I don't say to any writer that that's absolutely what they should do.

I guess this is what marriage is, or was, or could be. You drop the mask. You allow the fatigue in. You lean across and kiss the years because they're the things that matter.