It scares me how fast I go from disliking to loving him, and I wonder if it’s this way for everyone.

Everywhere you go, you see women more beautiful than yourself. You imagine him being attracted to them. You're drinking gasoline to stay warm.

The writing is clean. I really wouldn't have changed a word. Most of it is true, too, except that the hero quits drinking and the girl grows up. On the last page, the couple gets married, which is a nice way for a love story to end.

He said, "People wait their whole lives for the kind of happiness we have.

During chemo, you're more tired than you've ever been. It's like a cloud passing over the sun, and suddenly you're out. But you also find that you're stronger than you've ever been. You're clear. Your mortality is at optimal distance, not up so close that it obscures everything else, but close enough to give you depth perception. Previously, it has taken you weeks, months, or years to discover the meaning of an experience. Now it's instantaneous.

I feel in some ways I've had a difficult life. And it makes me the kind of writer I am, in what I value, what I respect, what I hold dear.

I live by Edith Whartons rule to get rid of anything neither useful nor beautiful. So I put the TV out on the street.