For we live with those retrievals from childhood that coalesce and echo throughout our lives, the way shattered pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope reappear in new forms and are songlike in their refrains and rhymes, making up a single monologue. We live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever story we tell.

Nowadays he doesn't think of his wife, though he knows he can turn around and evoke every move of her, describe any aspect of her, the weigh of her wrist on his heart during the night.

I don't see novels ending with any real sense of closure.

So we came to understand that small and important thing, that our lives could be large with interesting strangers who would pass us without any personal involvement.

Research can be a big clunker. It's difficult to know how you can make the historical light.

I thought I was being loved because I was being altered.

I often need a limited space. It's like having a house to roam around in and reinvent and have things to happen in, kind of like a French farce. Doors opening, doors closing, new people arriving, and disappearing, and so forth.