And I have learned now to live with it, learned when to expect it, how to outwit it, even how to regard it, when it does come, as more friend than lodger. We have reached a certain understanding, my migraine and I.

The apparent ease of California life is an illusion, and those who believe the illusion will live here in only the most temporary way.

For however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable I.

New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself. To think of 'living' there was to reduce the miraculous to the mundane; one does not 'live' at Xanadu.

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

It occurs to me that we allow ourselves to imagine only such messages as we need to survive.

Of course, you always think about how it will be read. I always aim for a reading in one sitting.