I've come to a much more controlled idea about death and loss, but I don't think it's possible to come to that much more controlled idea until you've gone through the crazy part . . . I don't mean that I'm controlled. I mean that I gave up the idea that I had control. That's the new control.

New York is full of people . . . with a feeling for the tangential adventure, the risky adventure, the interlude that's not likely to end in any double-ring ceremony.

Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion.

Details are our business as writers. Your heart leaps when you see a detail that can go somewhere

I wanted to be an oceanographer, actually. It's a way of going underwater. I've always been interested in how deep it was, you know.

We all have the same dreams.