We don't go to Shakespeare to find out about life in Elizabethan England; we go to Shakespeare to find out about ourselves now.

unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven.

We're a lukewarm people for all our feast days and hard work. Not much touches us, but we long to be touched. We lie awake at night willing the darkness to part and show us a vision. Our children frighten us in their intimacy, but we make sure they grow up like us. Lukewarm like us. On a night like this, hands and faces hot, we can believe that tomorrow will show us angels in jars and that the well-known woods will suddenly reveal another path.

What can i tell you about the choices we make? Fate reads like the polar opposite of decision, and so much of life reads like fate.

Happy Valentines Day to those who have found love, in whatever shape or form, and to those who are still hunting, don't give up. If you feel bad, send yourself a card. You must be worth it.

Writing has to have a great deal of certainty and self-assurance, but it's not arrogant.

There are so many separate selves; no one who writes creatively hasn't felt that.