All his life he would hold this moment as exemplary of what love was. It was not wanting anything more, nor was it expecting people to exceed what they had just accomplished; it was simply feeling so complete.

What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.

It seems to me that people who don’t learn as easily as others suffer from a kind of learning disability—there is something different about the way they comprehend unfamiliar material—but I fail to see how this disability is improved by psychiatric consultation. What seems to be lacking is a technical ability that those of us called ‘good students’ are born with. Someone should concretely study these skills and teach them. What does a shrink have to do with the process?

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

I always know more about the ending, even the aftermath to the ending, than I know about the beginning. And so there's a construction that works from back to front.

I certainly think Obama is the most hopeful president I've seen in the country since John Kennedy.

Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean - make sure they know what they mean!