I came into adult life equipped with an essentially romantic ethic.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States.

It's hard to find a book that's safe to write. Because one always goes to dark or difficult places.

Writing is the act of saying "I," of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying "listen to me, see it my way, change your mind."

A pool is, for many of us in the West, a symbol not of affluence but of order, of control over the uncontrollable. A pool is water, made available and useful, and is, as such, infinitely soothing to the western eye.

There must be times when everybody writes when they feel they're evading writing.

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.