Whenever I read a book about a marriage, I always feel I'm being lied to.

Culture is always the echo of economic realities; that's what Marx teaches. Feminism is a clear example of that.

One [paradox] is that pornography follows in that wake of women's liberation. The first instances of hard-core pornography were in late 18th-century in France, "the Golden Age of Women." The next wave in the 20th century comes from Sweden, one of the first countries where women voted. Then Germany, again, at the forefront of progress. Then America in the '80s, when women were closing the pay gap. And Japan, same thing.

In economies in which women work, men and women in relationships make about the same amount of money, or women make more. Women are 40 percent of breadwinners in America, and that number's been rising.

The research points pretty clearly to the rise of companionate marriage, and I just think it's going to keep being popular, for the very simple reason that it's basically the only way to afford a family life in the 21st-century in advanced economies. It's one of the major reasons for the spike in income inequality. Surgeons used to marry their secretaries. Now they marry other surgeons.

Toronto may be the only city where novels are integral to high art, the alternative scene and mainstream culture all at the same time.

The easier sex gets, the less intimate every sexual act gets. In the Victorian period, a kiss was like a f - k. And now, you know, when actual sexual acts become so easy, their intimacy declines and their meaning declines.