I'm not at all contemporary, not even modern, and the fact that I would be so quaintly attracted to that wrestling rule makes me, I suppose, seem all the more old-fashioned. I believe in rules of behavior, and I'm quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules.

A writer's job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.

Life is an X-rated soap opera.

Lilly was not crazy. She left a serious suicide note. 'Sorry,' said the note. 'Just not big enough.

Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.

No adult in my family would ever tell me anything about who my father was. I knew from an older cousin - only four years older than I am - everything, or what little I could discover about him.

Patriotism is not necessarily defined as blind devotion to a president's particular agenda - and that to dispute a presidential policy is not necessarily anti-American.