There are a great many sins in this world, none of them original.

Why mince words? Beautiful Ruins is an absolute masterpiece.

It's possible to overlook character flaws of in-laws for the simple reason that you feel neither responsible for them nor genetically implicated.

One of the nice things about our marriage, at least to my way of thinking, is that my wife and I no longer have to argue every thing through. We each know what the other will say, and so the saying becomes an unnecessary formality. No doubt some marriage counselor would explain to us that our problem is a failure to communicate, but to my way of thinking we've worked long and hard to achieve this silence, Lily's and mine, so fraught with mutual understanding.

I think it would be harder for me not to write comedy because the comic view of things is the one that comes most naturally to me.

America has always been a nation of small places, and as we lose them, we're losing part of ourselves.

... Baggott enjoys living on the knife edge between hilarity and heartbreak and that makes her a writer after my own heart.