As a child I assumed that when I reached adulthood, I would have grown-up thoughts.

Performance is really an important part of how I edit. I sometimes take something out because I realize I put in a joke just to be funny and the audience laughed, but I should be ashamed of myself. I sometimes take out sentences, which are perfectly fine on paper, just because they don't flow when I say them out loud. I always read my work out loud now.

I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself.

Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.

Sometimes with 'The New Yorker,' they have grammar rules that just don't feel right in my mouth.

Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings.

They were nothing like the French people I had imagined. If anything, they were too kind, too generous and too knowledgable in the fields of plumbing and electricity.