This post-college world felt different from everything that had come before it.

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.

Books light the fire-whether it's a book that's already written, or an empty journal that needs to be filled in.

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.

"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.

Both my mother and I have close groups of friends that include other writers, and these friendships are very important to us.

It seemed that everywhere you went, people quickly adapted to the way they had to live, and called it Life.