To his surprise he also discovered that it was possible to be good at what you had little interest in, just as it had been possible to be bad at something, whether painting or poetry, that you cared about a great deal.

I read pretty voraciously. If it's good, I don't care what it is.

Odd that the future should be so difficult to bring into focus when the past, uninvited, offered itself up so easily for inspection.

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.

He'd discovered that his memories of that summer were like bad movie montages - young lovers tossing a Frisbee in the park, sharing a melting ice-cream cone, bicycling along the river, laughing, talking, kissing, a sappy score drowning out the dialogue because the screenwriter had no idea what these two people might say to each other.

A short story is something that I think can be intuited and envisioned and held in your mind almost at once.

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.