The pleasure isn't in owning the person. The pleasure is this. Having another contender in the room with you.

You go to someone and you think, 'I'll tell him this.' But why? The impulse is that the telling is going to relieve you. And that's why you feel awful later--you've relieved yourself, and if it truly is tragic and awful, it's not better, it's worse---the exhibitionism inherent to a confession has only made the misery worse.

When he is sick, every man wants his mother.

Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.

The book really comes to life in the rewriting.

I came to New York and in only hours, New York did what it does to people: awakened the possibilities. Hope breaks out.

Never in his life had occasion to ask himself, "Why are things the way they are?" Why should he bother, when the way they were was always perfect? Why are things the way they are? The question to which there is no answer, and up till then he was so blessed he didn't even know the question existed.