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

When you write, you're always revealing a difficult part of yourself. It may not be a part of yourself that looks as difficult - there are parts that look more difficult - but in fact, they are all difficult, and you get kind of used to doing that. It is sort of the nature of the thing.

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.

I have not been the witness I wanted to be.

I have always wanted a swimming pool and never had one.

I read so ravenously that I would read through whole categories. I was crazy about reading biographies. [...] I think biographies are very urgent to children.

I was relying on a kind of natural transition - the transitions made by someone who is slightly deranged.