Why do you always have to be right. Why do you always have to have the last word. For once in your life just let it go.

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.

California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension.

Marriage is memory, marriage is time. Marriage is not only time: it is also, parodoxically, the denial of time.

Let me tell you one thing about why writers write: had I known the answer to any of these questions I would never have needed to write a novel.

Water is important to people who do not have it, and the same is true of control.

Becoming a parent is actually terrifying. A lot of people have that feeling about their dogs. And if you're the kind of person who's going to have that feeling about a dog you're definitely going to have that about a child.