Despair is a cavern beneath our feet and we teeter on its very brink.

I was not 15 anymore, and choices no longer had that same clear, bright edge to them.

A book is more than the sum of its materials. It is an artifact of the human mind and hand.

While I love to read contemporary fiction, I'm not drawn to writing it. Perhaps it's because the former journalist in me is too inhibited by the press of reality; when I think about writing of my own time I always think about nonfiction narratives. Or perhaps it's just that I find the present too confounding.

I can always write. Sometimes, to be sure, what I write is crap, but it's words on the page and therefore it is something to work with.

If screenwriters have to kill off a female character, they love to give her cancer. We've seen so many great actresses go down to the Big C: Ali MacGraw, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Debra Winger, Susan Sarandon.

I borrowed his brightness and used it to see my way, and then gradually, from the habit of looking at the world as he illuminated it, the light in my own mind rekindled.