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

It just so happened that for most of my life I've lived in the suburbs.

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

Maybe that's what we look for in the people we love, the spark of unhappiness we think we know how to extinguish.

Jill felt an emptiness open inside of her as she lifted her arm, a sense that something vital was being subtracted from her life. It was always like that when somebody you cared about went away, even when you knew it was inevitable, and it probably wasn't your fault.

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'm used to adapting my novels for feature film - it can be challenging to cut and compress three or four hundred pages into two hours of dramatic action.