I'm not too concerned what happens to my books after I'm dead. But I am very concerned by what's going on with the culture of reading and writing nowadays.

You see more sitting still than chasing after.

[T]o love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.

Reading enables me to maintain a sense of something substantive– my ethical integrity, my intellectual integrity.

Brooklyn was like Philadelphia made better by its proximity to Manhattan.

He wanted this someone to see how much he hurt.

Patty knew, in her heart, that he was wrong in his impression of her. And the mistake she went to go on to make, the really big life mistake, was to go along with Walter's version of her in spite of knowing that it wasn't right. He seemed so certain of her goodness that eventually he wore her down.