What do you do when you're no longer the hero of your own story?

There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more.

What I wanted to do seemed simple. I wanted something alive and shocking enough that it could be a morning in somebody's life. The most ordinary morning. Imagine, trying to do that.

Language in fiction is made up of equal parts meaning and music. The sentences should have rhythm and cadence, they should engage and delight the inner ear.

. . . he felt himself entering a moment so real he could only run toward it, shouting.

Any other vexations to report?" he asks. "I love the word 'vexations.'" "It's the 'x.' Nice to jump off a 'v' and bite into an 'x' like that." "Just the usual ones," she says. "How was the weekend?" "Vexing. Not really, I just wanted to say it. You?

All over China, parents tell their children to stop complaining and to finish their quadratic equations and trigonometric functions because there are sixty-five million American kids going to bed with no math at all.