But clearly life took people and shook them around until finally they were unrecognizable even to those who had once known them well. Still, there was power in once having known someone.

After a certain age, you felt a need not to be alone. It grew stronger, like a radio frequency, until finally it was so powerful that you were forced to do something about it.

The only option for a creative person was constant motion—a lifetime of busy whirligigging in a generally forward direction, until you couldn’t do it any longer.

"Unputdownable" is, I suppose, something we all dream of, maybe without knowing it. I realized, some time ago, that a novel can hold a lot, and it made sense that this one was not of the sleek and economical variety, but instead the "full" type. Novel as piñata. And the reader does the whacking. I had a central idea, which is to look at what happens to talent over time.

But it had no doubt sprung from true emotion, for all that parents ever wanted, really, was for you to love their child the way they did.

Objectifying your own novel while writing it never really helps. Instead, I guess while you're writing you need to think: This is the novel I want to write. And when you're done you need to think: This is what the novel I wanted to write feels like and reads like and looks like. Other people might call it sweeping or small, but it's the book you chose.

Just the act of sleeping beside someone you liked to be with. Maybe that was love.