She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about.

Don't waste your time on life.

Every letter was a love letter. Of course, as love letters went, this one could have been better. It was not very promising, for instance, that Madeleine claimed not to want to see him for the next half-century.

Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.

I want an ending that’s satisfying. I’m more of a classical writer than a modernist one in that I want the ending to be coherent and feel like an ending. I don’t like when it just seems to putter out. I mean, life is chaotic enough.

We listened to them, but it was clear they'd received too much therapy to know the truth.

The Pulitzer Prize is an idea; it's a vote of confidence. Like literature, it exists purely in the mind.