You can examine the whole 19th century from the point of view of who would have maxed out their credit cards. Emma Bovary would have maxed hers out. No question. Mr. Scrooge would not have. He would have snipped his up.

Every utopia - let's just stick with the literary ones - faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don't fit in?

You're never going to kill storytelling, because it's built into the human plan. We come with it.

I'm from the generation that had the boys' door and the girls' door when you went to school, and you got in big trouble if you went in the wrong one.

It's in Macbeth: "The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon." I seldom have occasion to pull it out, but it's ready and waiting!

All I can hope for is a reconstruction: the way love feels is always only approximate.

As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes.