I wanted to do something different. Therefore, the first person I thought would have been too exclusionary. It would have said me, me, me, me, me. I, I, I, I, I. As if I were pushing away my experiences from the experiences of others. Because basically what I was trying to do was show our commonality. I mean to say, in the very ordinariness of what I recount I think perhaps the reader will find resonances with his or her own life.

Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

All children are love children, he said, but only the best ones are ever called that.

What better portrait of a writer than to show a man who has been bewitched by books?

[Charles] Reznikoff was in between faiths, in between worlds... a double, hyphenated American. I think it probably goes deeper than that.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn't write, I would stop breathing.

Our lives carry us along in ways we cannot control, and almost nothing stays with us. It dies when we do, and death is something that happens to us every day.