That's the way I will write characters, put a fair amount of myself in them, and then everyone else who was like that person, I will pick and choose.

When I think back about my immediate reaction to that redheads girl, it seems to spring from an appreciation of natural beauty. I mean the heart pleasure you get from looking at speckled leaves or the palimpsested bark of plane trees in Provence. There was something richly appealing to her color combination, the ginger snaps floating in the milk-white skin, the golden highlights in the strawberry hair. it was like autumn, looking at her. It was like driving up north to see the colors.

They were bound for college, husbands, child-rearing, unhappiness only dimly perceived- bound, in other words, for life.

Whenever we got a glimpse, their faces looked indecently revealed, as though we were used to seeing women in veils.

The perishable nature of love is what gives love its profound importance in our lives. If it were endless, if it were on tap, love wouldn't hit us the way it does.

The humming of my parents' voices from behind my bedroom wall, which throughout my childhood had filled me with a sense of security, had now become a source of anxiety and panic.

I'm constantly having doubts and moments of depression and then excitement and then back into the slough of despond.