If you took every tear cried by everyone on earth on one single day and put them in a container, how big would that container need to be? Could you fill a water tower? Three water towers? It's one of those unknowable things. There has to be an answer, but we'll never know what it is.

Trying to forget really doesn't work. In fact, it's pretty much the same as remembering. But I tried to forget anyway, and to ignore the fact that I was remembering you all the time.

There's a great temptation to throw things in, as you put it, that you think are neat, or that you have a very clear, specific memory of and think you could do a good job writing about. What I find is that it's like a seed you plant. You can try it, and if it will grow and connect with other ideas in the book, and you can see connections that you can actually realize on the page, then you're allowed to leave it in. But if it just kind of lies there and doesn't really add up to anything or there's no chemistry with everything else going on in the book, then you have to take it out.

I never write with any kind of message, and I don't think that this book, 'Goodbye, Stranger' has a message in the capital M form of the word but I do hope it makes people ask themselves questions about what they think.

When something works for you, all you can do is cross your fingers and hope that it will work for someone else.

I'm an old man, and she's gone now. So don't worry, okay?

I feel lucky that I read so many books as a kid because I know that no matter how much I appreciate a book now, and I can love a book very much, it's never going to be that childhood passion for a book. There's some element, something special about the way they're reading books and experiencing books that's finite.