The writer’s life is a life of revisions.

I feel as if I'm clearly part of a trend among writers who take themselves seriously - and I confess to taking myself as seriously as the next writer.

You could slap his wrist for saying it, but then he said it with his face, and you could spank him for making faces, but then he said it with his eyes, and there were limits to correction-no way, in the end, to penetrate behind the blue irises and eradicate a boy's disgust.

There's a hazardous sadness to the first sounds of someone else's work in the morning; it's as if stillness experiences pain in being broken.

I voluntarily inflicted a certain level of insanity on myself.

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

He wanted this someone to see how much he hurt.