They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end.

...that in spite of living in a mansion an American is not above wearing a pair of secondhand pants, bought for fifty cents.

The urge to convert experience into a group of words that are in a grammatical relation to one another is the most basic, ongoing impulse of my life.

Writing is one of the most assertive things a person can do.

I approach writing stories as a recorder. I think of my role as some kind of reporting device - recording and projecting.

And wasn't it terrible, how much he looked forward to those moments, so much so that sometimes even a ride by himself on the subway was the best part of the day? Wasn't it terrible that after all the work one put into finding a person to spend one's life with, after making a family with that person, even in spite of missing that person...that solitude was what one relished the most, the only thing that, even in fleeting, diminished doses, kept one sane?

The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace.