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

As for writing about temptation, there's no drama without temptation, and no novel without drama.

Because, really, what was worse than lying wide-awake in the dark, watching your life drip away, one irreplaceable minute after another?

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

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

To this day, she’s still sad. Because there’s not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it. I’m just saying that I took the pain that was inside of her at that moment and made it my own. And it didn’t hurt me at all.

Back then, when everybody thought the world would last forever, nobody had time for anything.