If anything, he seemed a little lonely, all too ready to open his heart at the slightest sign of interst.

She told her therapist it reminded her of coming home the summer after her freshman year at Rutgers, stepping back into the warm bath of family and friends, loving it for a week or two, and then feeling trapped, dying to return to school, missing her roommates and her cute new boyfriend, the classes and the parties and the giggly talks before bed, understanding for the first time that that was her real life now, that this, despite everything she'd ever loved about it, was finished for good.

My mythic version of America is very much about parents and children, and in my experience, the suburban setting is where that particular drama plays out. Which isn't to say that there aren't parents and children in cities or on farms. I just don't know them.

Nothing beats novel writing because it's complete expression of you. You just control everything. Not even a movie director has that level of control.

It's not the cheating. It's the hunger for an alternative. The refusal to accept unhappiness.

Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.

I've been a little bit obsessed with religion, without being a religious person, for about a decade.