He'd never had to make the adjustments and compromises other people accepted early in their romantic careers; never had a chance to learn the lesson that Sarah taught him everyday--that beauty was only a part of it, and not even the most important part, that there were transactions between people that occurred on some mysterious level beneath the skin, or maybe even beyond the body.

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 just took some people a little longer than others to realize how few words they needed to get by, how much of life they could negotiate in silence.

My wife and I left New York when she got pregnant - we just thought it would be really hard to stay in the city.

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.

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

I write about kids growing up, I write a lot about schools and parents, and all of my experiences with those things have been suburban experiences.