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.

You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.

We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly--as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth--the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives

In this world,” Franny once observed, “just as you’re trying to think of yourself as memorable, there is always someone who forgets that that they have met you.

The gardener had a dread of small women; he'd always imagined them to have an anger disproportionate to their size.

Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.