Elective ignorance was a great survival skill, perhaps the greatest.

Even in an intensely mediated world, in a world that offers at least the illusion of radical self-invention and radical freedom of choice, I as a novelist am drawn to the things you can't get away from. Because much of the promise of radical self-invention, of defining yourself through this marvelous freedom of choice, it's just a lie. It's a lie that we all buy into, because it helps the economy run.

And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary?

Seriously, the world is changing so quickly that if you had any more than 80 years of change I don't see how you could stand it psychologically.

It seems to me self-evident that if you have a life, things happen in it, and certain things do change; certain things end. People you know die.

He couldn't figure out if she was immensely well adjusted or seriously messed up.

I voluntarily inflicted a certain level of insanity on myself.