But I suspect that all writers come up with premises of some kind, fragments of narrative or scenarios, in the course of a working week.

Sometimes it's moments like that, real complicated moments, absorbing moments, that make you realize that even hard times have things in them that make you feel alive. And then there's music, and girls, and drugs, and homeless people who've read Pauline Kael, and wah-wah pedals, and English potato chip flavors, and I haven't even read Martin Chuzzlewit yet... There's plenty out there.

Complaining about boring football is a little like complaining about the sad ending of King Lear: it misses the point somehow.

The artistic temperament is particularly unhelpful if it is just that, with no end product.

We get together with people because they're the same or because they're different, and in the end we split with them for exactly the same reasons.

When it came down to it, he just wasn't that engaged. You had to be engaged to be a vegetarian; you had to be engaged to sing "Both Sides Now" with your eyes closed; when it came down to it, you had to be engaged to be a mother.

You'll remember someone who broke your heart, and you'll think to yourself, 'Oh yes, I remember how that feels.' But you can't.