You are writing for your contemporaries - not for Posterity. If you are lucky, your contemporaries will become Posterity.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

Childhood is the province of the imagination and when I immerse myself in it, I re-create it as it was, as it could have been, as I wanted - and didn't want - it to be.

But he doesn't love her. I invented that. It is a plot if you imagine people in love--the lazy looping criss crosses of love, blows, stares, tears. No. It doesn't happen. No love. People meet, touch, stare into one another's faces, shake their heads clear, move on, forget. It doesn't happen.

How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.

The mere passage of time makes us all exiles.

On the elusive gift of blending austerity of craft with elasticity of allure.