Of course, I didn't imagine then that I could have had a real relationship with any guy. I thought that by virtue of being me I was disqualified.

She has always been a bystander in family destruction, never realizing she herself possessed the capacity to inflict it.

I had the fleeting thought then that we are each of us pathetic in one way or another, and the trick is to marry a person whose patheticness you can tolerate.

When I was writing my first two books I was also freelancing and teaching and doing other odd jobs.

What greater happiness is there than the privilege of being bored together?

In some ways I think it would be very dignified if I went away for twenty years and then wrote my fourth book.

Obviously the bar is much higher now for a behavior to be scandalous. Social media has really changed the way people live. It's not a new impulse; it's just being enacted in a new way.