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.

Everybody has a theme. You talk to somebody awhile, and you realize they have one particular thing that rules them. The best you can do is a variation on the theme, but that's about it.

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.

Even if you yourself were unhappy and anxious, whenever you glimpsed happiness in your child, you suddenly became happy too.

Part of the beauty of love was that you didn’t need to explain it to anyone else. You could refuse to explain. With love, apparently you didn’t necessarily feel the need to explain anything at all.

I've been waiting for someone to sign the permission slip for me to write about sex. In the meantime, I've written about sex in all my books anyway.