Life, he thought, is a blatant act of imagination.

Some memories remain close; you can shut your eyes and find yourself back in them. But there are second-person memories, too, distant you memories, and these are trickier: you watch yourself in disbelief.

You probably have to trust that your work is following certain themes and certain movements, but then the rest is a kind of piecing together so that the whole becomes larger than the parts.

What kind of wife would I be if I left your father simply because he was dead?

You have to do disappointment twice.

I've been a dad since I was nineteen, so I think a lot about fatherhood and the power of that sacrifice in your life.

Maybe every couple lived in the gaps between conversations, unable to say the important things for fear they had already been said, or couldn't be said; maybe every relationship started over every time two people came together.