Reciprocation was a pretty powerful stimulant to the imagination.

That was his mother. When she wasn't crying over the breakfast cereal, she was laughing about killing herself.

(About Love)The most important thing in life, and you can't tell whether people have it or not. Surely this is wrong? Surely people who are happy should look happy, at all times, no matter how much money they have or how uncomfortable their shoes are or how little their child is sleeping; and people who are doing OK but have still not found their soul-mate should look, I don't know, anxious, like Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally; and people who are desperate should wear something, a yellow ribbon maybe, which would allow them to be identified by similar desperate people.

I don't want my books to exclude anyone, but if they have to, then I would rather they excluded the people who feel they are too smart for them!

contemporary poetry is a kind of Reykjavik, a place where accessibility and intelligence have been fighting a Cold War by proxy for the last half-century.

It's just that none of us had the wit or talent to make them into songs. We made them into life, which much messier, and more time consuming, and leaves nothing for anybody to whistle.

When your sad--like really sad--you only want to be with other people who are sad.