Love makes you want to be a better man. But maybe love, real love, also gives you permission to just be the man you are.

Most beautiful, good things were done by women people scorn.

It was surprising that you could spend hours in the middle of the night pretending things were OK, and know in thirty seconds of daylight that that simply wasn't so.

My dad had limitations. That's what my good-hearted mom always told us. He had limitations, but he meant no harm. It was kind of her to say, but he did do harm.

My imagination is more tweaked by imagining the lives of the people who were there before us. I don't need to give myself the willies. I'm quite good at that - I can freak myself out wherever I am.

What a generous thing that is, I realize, for a husband to try to make his wife laugh.

We're into this barrage of pop culture - you know, TV, movies, the Internet. We become creatures that we've made up, made of certain different flotsam from pop culture and certain different personas that are in style.