New Orleans is one of the two most ingrown, self-obsessed little cities in the United States. (The other is San Francisco.)

I want to talk to her. I want to have lunch with her. I want her to give me a book she just read and loved. She is my phantom limb, and I just can’t believe I’m here without her.”- on losing her best friend

[On George W. Bush:] How is it possible that the president is off on vacation and the vice president is, too? Not that it matters that much if the president is on vacation; on some level, the president is always on vacation.

I am not a new journalist, whatever that is. I just sit here at the typewriter and bang away at the old forms.

It's much easier to get over someone if you can delude yourself into thinking you never really cared that much.

You enter into a certain amount of madness when you marry a person with pets.

I think if you're lucky enough to find a voice in whatever you do, that voice will come sneaking out no matter what.