I know I've lost my mind. But I'm not concerned, because it's the first thing I've lost in a long time that actually feels good.

If I walk into a place, a party, say, and there's a bookshelf, I immediately gravitate toward it. Unless there's a bar. But even then, it's only a matter of a few rounds before I make my way to the bookshelf. If there are good books on it, I may never leave the spot all night. Anybody I really want to talk to is going to make his or her way to that bookshelf sooner or later, anyway, right? Books are a nexus. They start conversations, and they continue conversations, and they make people better conversationalists. I have not found this to be the case with Iron Chef, or even alcohol.

My neediness is not a hole to be filled but something beneath the skin scratching to get out.

People really do change. Don't let anyone tell you differently. That the future does not conform to the past is not the exception, but the rule.

It's not easy getting old, you know. Things become a lot less clear.

As a result of manifest destiny, we gutted our resources.

Reading is, at its best, not an escape; it is genuine experience. A novel is not a monologue, but a conversation, a collaboration between writer and reader, an invaluable exchange of human conditions.