It’s what we chase but never find. It is the mystery of our lives, the understanding that even when we have everything we want it is one day to leave us. It’s the something unseen, the lurking devastation, the darkness that gives our lives dimension.

In America, people of a certain age ask, 'Where were you when Kennedy was shot?' In my house you were more likely to be asked, 'Where were you when you first read 'The Catcher In The Rye?

I'm not afraid of total failure. In the end, we're all just food for worms, so what are we so worried about?

I believe writers need to be chameleons, or like Meryl Streep, who can play all sorts of characters. A good writer should be able to cross gender lines and people of all social classes. So for me, writing from a male point of view would be a great challenge, that I would look forward to taking on.

It was never the act itself but our own understanding of it that defeated us, over and over again.

Life was a freight train barreling toward just one stop, our loved ones streaking past our windows in blurs of color and light. There was no holding on to any of it, and no slowing it down.

...the deepest secrets about ourselves that we, in the ultimate act of humanity, will spare those we truly love.