People sometimes get in the habit of being loyal to a mistake.

Since her retirement from teaching Miss Beryl's health had in many respects greatly improved, despite her advancing years. An eighth-grade classroom was an excellent place to snag whatever was in the air in the way of illness. Also depression, which, Miss Beryl believed, in conjunction with guilt, opened the door to illness. Miss Beryl didn't know any teachers who weren't habitually guilty and depressed-guilty they hadn't accomplished more with their students, depressed that very little more was possible.

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

HBO is really famous for hiring good people and staying out of their way until they ask for help, or need it. And that reputation is earned.

Movies have to handle time very efficiently. They're about stringing scenes together in the present. Novels aren't necessarily about that.

My books are elegiac in the sense that they're odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination.

I think a lot of what is going on with kids who get pushed too far and attempt either murder or suicide is that they are trying to deal with their own non-existence for the people who are supposed to care most for them.