Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.

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

A screenwriter heard me read from my novel 'The Wishbones' when it was still in progress and mentioned me to some producers in Hollywood. They called, and I told them I had a novel in my drawer about a high school election that goes haywire. They asked to take a look, and my life changed pretty dramatically as a result.

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.

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.

I really wanted to be a musician, but it turned out I had no sense of time.