If you are very lucky, you're allowed to be in certain places during just the right season of your life: by the sea for the summer when you're seven or eight and full of the absolute need to swim until dark and exhaustion close their hands together, cupping you in between.

At a Boston signing, someone from the audience asked why I was so obsessed with furniture in my books. The question rattled around in my head. I had no idea that I was obsessed with furniture.

Far more disturbing than any spook house at an amusement park is a ride through the old hometown if you've been away for years.

The Viennese wash everything. Where else in the world does the government hire public servants to wash public telephone booths and the glass over traffic lights? Every time I see someone doing these things, I smile like a child.

Sometimes you have to give up on people. Not because you don't care, but because they don't.

People are always waiting to be discovered.

My memory loves you… it asks about you all the time.