I wrote my first novel and my second novel in Chicago. It was the place where I became a writer. It's my favorite city.

Of course I tensed up when he touched me. To be with him was to hurt him-inevitably. And that's what I'd felt as he reached for me: I'd felt as though I were committing an act of violence against him, because I was.

To be human is to catch the falling person.

Ergo: girls should always make the first move, because (a) they are, on the whole, less likely to be rejected than guys, (b) that way, girls will never get kissed unless they want to be kissed.

But there's so much to do: cigarettes to smoke, sex to have, swings to swing on.

The ideas of directing attention outward, trying to imagine other people complexly, trying not to see myself as the center of the universe - these concepts have become important to me, and I hope they're at work in my life on a minute-by-minute basis.

Remember that time in the minivan, twenty minutes ago, when we didn't die?