You surely know that in the course of a long marriage it is not unusual for a husband or a wife to develop a crush on someone else.

I have to pay attention to what I have felt and observed, then push these responses to an extreme while keeping the story within the realm of being psychologically and emotionally true.

For years I did most of my reading on the F train between Brooklyn and Manhattan. I had long commutes, and I read tons of books on that train; I loved it.

Oh, I wish I organized my books. But I don't. I'm not an organized person. The best I can do is put the books I really like in one sort of general area, and poetry in another.

All these lives," she said. "All the stories we never know." (125)

I do reread, kind of obsessively, partly for the surprise of how the same book reads at a different point in life, and partly to have the sense of returning to an old friend.

The facts didn't matter. Their stories mattered, and each of their stories belonged to each of them alone.