You know, I'm just a very boring, not very funny person in person. I don't feel pressured to be otherwise.

But that inadequacy, or feeling of inadequacy, never really goes away. You just have to trudge ahead in the rain, regardless.

Sometimes I ask myself if writing novels is even respectable.

We had put almost all of our possessions in storage, which was a metaphor for being twenty, as were so many things.

I had never feared insomnia before--like prison, wouldn't it just give you more time to read?

I love plays. Even bad ones. I like the fact that actual live, breathing people are standing before you in tense situations that you are not personally responsible for.

She was not good on the phone. She needed the face, the pattern of eyes, nose, trembling mouth... People talking were meant to look at a face, the disastrous cupcake of it, the hide-and-seek of the heart dashing across. With a phone, you said words, but you never watched them go in. You saw them off at the airport but never knew whether there was anyone there to greet them when they got off the plane.