We imagine things — that we wouldn't be able to survive, but in fact, we do survive. ... We have no choice, so we do it.

When you're writing fiction, you don't have notes necessarily. You don't carve it, it's not like a piece of sculpture, it's more like water color.

In theory momentos serve to bring back the moment. In fact they serve only to make clear how inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here. How inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here is something else I could never afford to see.

I do have a strong sense of an order in the universe.

What you're normally doing as a writer is trying to find the narrative.

In the early years, you fight because you don't understand each other. In the later years, you fight because you do.

We imagined we knew everything the other thought, even when we did not necessarily want to know it, but in fact, I have come to see, we knew not the smallest fraction of what there was to know.