Often, I think, displaced people imagine themselves leading double lives. So a portion of my identity has always been privately siphoned into what would have been if I had stayed in Wisconsin.

In every person's face, there is one place that seems to express them most accurately. With my grandmother, you always looked at her mouth.

Reading-not occasionally, not only on vacation but everyday-gives me nourishment and enlarges my life in mysterious and essential ways.

Casebook is my attempt at a love story. I had a vision of a difficult love.

Sometimes, a stage curtain parts and you see: life could be better if you had more. Usually, I think, we can get just as good a different way. But tricks, they do not always work.

Love ruined people's lives, the way our parents said drugs could.

So many things that seemed crucial and excruciatingly hard ended and then didn't matter anymore, forever after