College athletics are so entrenched and enjoyed by so many people that they will never be discontinued or substantially changed. I know that. I just pity the people caught in that tender trap. And most of all, I pity those kids.

I love Japanese design and fabrics. I also love people who make clothes for mass consumption but do it well and cleverly.

Oversized houses, like oversized cars, seem to be a particularly American fixation.

Winter in the country is very white. There is black grit on all the shoulders of the roads and on the big mounds from the plows, and all the cars are filthy, but the fields are dazzling and untouched and pristine.

I once had a boyfriend who couldn't write unless he was wearing a necktie and a dress shirt, which I thought was really weird, because this was a long time ago, and no one I knew ever wore dress shirts, let alone neckties; it was like he was a grown-up reenacter or something.

There's a marvelous sense of mastery that comes with writing a sentence that sounds exactly as you want it to.

I don't like hiking with convicts carrying machetes.