To ask a novelist to talk about his novels is like asking somebody to cook about their dancing.

I was captivated by Sherrie Flick's meticulous and intelligent study of Margaret and Vivette, and the men they share. Reconsidering Happiness is a courageously intimate novel about the young women of modern America, their friendships, their betrayals, and their anxious cravings for everything from sex to pastry.

Retiring from writing is not to retire from life, but retiring from writing is to avoid the inevitable bitterness which a writing career is bound to deliver as its end product, in almost every case.

There's solace in the thought that I will never finish missing her.

My father had osteomyelitis-his left arm was withered between his elbow and his shoulder ... . But the amputation of a Stone Age man called Leaf, a stoneworker, does not relate to my father at all.

These are the stories that we tell ourselves and only ourselves, and they are better left unshared.

There is no remedy for death--or birth--except to hug the spaces in between. Live loud. Live wide. Live tall.