After all, what was adult life but one moment of weakness piled on top of another? Most people just fell in line like obedient little children, doing exactly what society expected of them at any given moment, all the while pretending that they’d actually made some sort of choice.

I was a garbage man in New Jersey in summers during college at Yale. Everybody else got to go to Switzerland and I got to go to the dump.

It felt good, the whole family together on a sunny morning in a wholesome environment. If it hadn't been for the warshiping God part, he would have happily attended church on a regular basis.

I find that even small changes sometimes jog you out of a mental rut.

Once you'd broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you were connected forever, whether you liked it or not.

The lesson you have to learn as novelist is how to be collaborative, and how to say, "I don't get to dictate this."

I used to describe myself as a comic novelist, but my concerns seem to have darkened over the past few years.