My God, he couldn't help thinking, how terrible it is to be that age, to have emotions so near the surface that the slightest turbulence causes them to boil over. That, very simply, was what adulthood must be all about -- acquiring the skill to bury things more deeply. Out of sight and, whenever possible, out of mind.

What if all everybody needed in the world was to be sure of one friend? What if you were the one, and you refused to say those simple words?

That afternoon I came to understand that one of the deepest purposes of intellectual sophistication is to provide distance between us and our most disturbing personal truths and gnawing fears.

I think the darker aspect of my fiction-or anybody's fiction-is by its very nature somehow easier to talk about.

Go to it. Be bold. Be true. Be kind. Rotate your tires. Don't drink so much. There aren't going to be enough liver transplants to go around.

When you don't know what to do, try something; if that doesn't work, try something else.

If you work at comedy too laboriously, you can kill what's funny in the joke.