I know from the middle distance I give off the look of being prolific, which is a funny compliment to receive.

The reason 'closure' is a cliche is that it is used too often, too imprecisely, and doesn't in any case reflect reality. In reality, such closure in broken friendships and much else in life is rarely achieved; only death brings closure and then not always for those still living.

I know how many days in which I have just answered e-mail, had three phone calls and a two hour lunch. Poof, gone. They are not infrequent.

My wife who is non-Jewish regrets it all the time that I can say these terrible things about fellow Jews and she can't.

Courage is nine-tenths context. What is courageous in one setting can be foolhardy in another and even cowardly in a third.

I am the heterosexual Truman Capote.

What, really, is wanted from a neighborhood? Convenience, certainly, an absence of major aggravation, to be sure. But perhaps mostof all, ideally, what is wanted is a comfortable background, a breathing space of intermission between the intensities of private life and the calculations of public life.