You have family", Bob said. "You have a wife who hates you. Kids who are furious with you. A brother and sister who make you insane. And a nephew who used to be kind of a drip but apparently is not so much of a drip now. That's called family".

Each of his son's had been his favorite child.

I don't especially like to travel, not the way many people do. I know many people that love to go to far-off and different places, and I've never been like that. I seem to get homesick as quickly as a child.

The appetites of the body were private battles.

I would hope that my readers feel a sense of awe at the quality of human endurance, at the endurance of love in the face of a variety of difficulties; that the quotidian life is not always easy, and is something worthy of respect.

If you get divorced in New York, you go into therapy and will talk to anybody you meet on the sidewalk about it.

My first job was when I was about 12, cleaning houses in the afternoons for different elderly women in town. I hated it.