I don't turn to greeting cards for wisdom and advice, but they are a fine reflection of the general drift of the culture.

I love convincing a reader that an unusual or seemingly ordinary subject is worth his or her time - it's part of the fun for me as a writer.

I teach a non-fiction writing class at New York University, and one of my great pleasures is deciding on the syllabus.

One of my favorite activities as a teen-ager was to watch television over the phone with my best friend.

I don't like hiking with convicts carrying machetes.

I had forgotten how thrilling a snow day is until my son started school, and as much as he loves it, he swoons at the idea of a free day arriving unexpectedly, laid out like a gift.

I really believed that anything at all was worth writing about if you cared about it enough, and that the best and only necessary justification for writing any particular story was that I cared about it.