For years, I kept a Post-it note above my desk. WORK NOT LOVE! was what it said. It seemed a sturdier kind of happiness.

Some women make it look so easy, the way they cast ambition off like an expensive coat that no longer fits.

Also she signed away the right to self-destruct years ago. The fine print on the birth certificate, her friends call it.

When God is a father, he is said to be elsewhere. When God is a mother, she is said to be everywhere.

My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead. Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art, never mundane things. Nabokov didn't even fold his own umbrella. Vera licked his stamps for him.

One of the odd things about being a writer is that you never reach a point of certainty, a point of mastery where you can say, Right. Now I understand how this is done.

But now it seems possible that the truth about getting older is that there are fewer and fewer things to make fun of until finally there is nothing you are sure you will never be.