That adage about 'Write what you know' is basically the opposite of the way I function. I write about what I'm curious to find out.

Sure, everything is ending," Jules said, "but not yet.

There's something very strange about associating me with that prize. I had hoped for it in a more directed way as a journalist. Somehow as a journalist you know there are Pulitzers out there and you can work hard and get one. To win it for Fiction seems unbelievable.

The sky was electric blue above the trees but the yard felt dark. Stephanie went to the edge of the lawn and sat her forehead on her knees. The grass and soil were still warm from the day. She wanted to cry but she couldn't. The feeling was too deep.

I don't think that all girls seek the influence of older men, but I think girls whose fathers are absent or recessed from their lives often do. And honestly, when I was growing up, fathers were generally pretty absent from their children's lives. We didn't see a lot of them. That may be something that has genuinely changed for the better in our culture: men are more present for their children now that more women are working.

I felt no shame in these activities, because I understood what almost no one else seemed to grasp: that there was only an infinitesimal difference, a difference so small that it barely existed except as a figment of the human imagination, between working in a tall green glass building on Park Avenue and collecting litter in a park. In fact, there may have been no difference at all.

I think, The world is actually huge. That's the part no one can really explain.