I think I've learned to be mindful. I may not have taken the time to try to understand narrative techniques, let's say, with any rigor, if I did not also have to try to explain those techniques to someone else.

Pleasure is, after all, a luxury. It's love that's essential.

You can't possibly conduct a proper affair without a lot of deliberating, scheming, speculating, and conniving. It's a delicate balance where the excitement must equal the guilt and sex must be as bright as the future you gamble.

There were the fairy tales my father told to me at bedtime. All the standards. I thought my father invented wolves.

Reading is also a creative activity if you're doing it right. You can learn more from a story that's left the tracks than from a successful story.

You lose a wallet or keys or something and you notice in a second, but your life can go missing and you don't even know it.

I was reading for understanding. I wanted to do to a reader what Salinger did for me.