One of the odd things about middle age, he concluded, was the strange decisions a man discovers he's made by not really making them, like allowing friends to drift away through simple neglect.

I just have this feeling that if it weren't for the Gloversville Free Library that I probably would not be a writer.

Even at its most perceptive, sociology deals in abstractions.

I'll tell you one thing, though. It's a terrible thing to be a disappointment to a good woman.

Whatever you're working on, take small bites. The task will not be overwhelming if you can reduce it to its smallest component.

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

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.