People don't save other people. People save themselves.

The television replaced the sound of conversation that was missing from my grandparents' lives.

Basically what we have here is a dreamer. Somebody out of touch with reality. When she jumped, she probably thought she'd fly

But, like anyone in love, Madeleine believed that her own relationship was different from every other relationship, immune from typical problems.

Well, marriage doesn't function in the way it used to in terms of deciding our fate, but it's in our heads, and it determines a lot of our actions. Like, right now, if you think about gay marriage - and they just started having the first gay marriages in New York - it shows what a potent idea marriage remains for people.

The only way we know it's true is that we both dreamed it. That's what reality is. It's a dream everyone has together.

Novelists are always resisting autobiographical readings of their work, because they know how false those can be.