Lancaster, California ... that promised land sometimes called 'the west coast of Iowa.

We all survive more than we think we can.

We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images.

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

Another thing I need to do, when I'm near the end of the book, is sleep in the same room with it...Somehow the book doesn't leave you when you're asleep right next to it.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We live entirely by the impression of a narrative line upon disparate images, the shifting phantasmagoria, which is our actual experience.

Going back to California is not like going back to Vermont, or Chicago; Vermont and Chicago are relative constants, against which one measures one's own change. All that is constant about the California of my childhood is the rate at which it disappears.