....basically the sort of guy who looks entirely at home in sockless white loafers and a mint-green knit shirt from Lacoste.

I wasn't all that attracted to writing originally. I read a great deal. My parents read a great deal. I do know that as my interest in tennis waned, my interest in academics increased. I mean, I started doing my homework in high school and discovering that it was somewhat fun. And then in college I barely even played on the team because just classes were much more interesting.

I'm very bright, but I'm terrified of sounding like someone who thinks he's very bright-because those people are assholes.

To make someone an icon is to make him an abstraction, and abstractions are incapable of vital communication with living people.

I know I never work in whatever gets called an office, e.g., a school office I use only for meeting students and storing books I know I'm not going to read anytime soon.

God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I’m not crazy about.

I miss everyone. I can remember being young and feeling a thing and identifying it as homesickness, and then thinking well now that’s odd, isn’t it, because I was home, all the time. What on earth are we to make of that?