Getting a life’ is something only a complete idiot could believe. Like you can just drive to a store and get a life. See it in its shiny box and look inside the plastic window and catch a glimpse of yourself in a new life and say, ‘Wow, I look much happier — I think this is the life I need to get!’, take it to the counter, ring it up, put it on your credit card. If getting a life was that easy, we’d be one blissed-out race.

I think when you're 16, if you have good parents, they generally just fade in the background. I had great parents, and because they were great, I thought very little about them in high school.

Becoming a father made me much more interested in the parent character in my novels. I've never found parents that interesting.

...whatever you're worried about, you're bigger than the worries.

I'd rather wonder than get answers I couldn't live with.

One swing set, well worn but structurally sound, seeks new home. Make memories with your kid or kids so that someday he or she or they will look into the backyard and feel the ache of sentimentality as desperately as I did this afternoon. It's all fragile and fleeting, dear reader, but with this swing set, your child(ren) will be introduced to the ups and downs of human life gently and safely, and may also learn the most important lesson of all: No matter how hard you kick, no matter how high you get, you can't go all the way around.

I wondered whether I could find a Great Perhaps here at all or whether I had made a grand miscalculation.