People like to warn you that by the time you reach the middle of your life, passion will begin to feel like a meal eaten long ago, which you remember with great tenderness.

In The Interestings I wanted to write about what happens to talent over time. In some people talent blooms, in others it falls away.

You had only one chance for a signature in life, but most people left no impression.

I always thought it was the saddest and most devastating ending. How you could have these enormous dreams that never get met. How without knowing it you could just make yourself smaller over time. I don't want that to happen to me.

Twitter," said Manny, waving his hand. "You know what that is? Termites with microphones.

And didn't it always go like that--body parts not lining up the way you wanted them to, all of it a little bit off, as if the world itself were an animated sequence of longing and envy and self-hatred and grandiosity and failure and success, a strange and endless cartoon loop that you couldn't stop watching, because, despite all you knew by now, it was still so interesting.

The generation that had information, but no context. Butter, but no bread. Craving, but no longing.