The library is a place where most of the things I came to value as an adult had their beginnings.

He tried to imagine the sound of the color red.

My ambition was to embrace those general qualities that Ernest Hemingway, a former newspaperman, once said should be present in all good books: 'the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.'

More than anything, it's a game of innocence. Politicians may come and go, but they always get booed at the ballpark.

The only way to fight nostalgia is to listen to somebody else's nostalgia

They all laughed. I drew their pictures and they asked for copies and I handed them out as if they were my tickets to the show. In the Navy Yard, I could drink with men because I worked with men; in the Parkview, I could drink with men because I drew their pictures. The world was a grand confusion. Finally, when I was bleary, when my hand wouldn't do what I wanted it to do, I went home. I would lie alone in the dark, feeling that I was a character in a story that had lost its plot.

Writing is the hardest work in the world not involving heavy lifting.