A lot of women, when they're young, feel they have very good friends, and find later on that friendship is complicated. It's easy to be friends when everyone's 18. It gets harder the older you get, as you make different life choices, as people say in America. A lot of women's friendships begin to founder.

When I was 21 I wanted to write like Kafka. But, unfortunately for me, I wrote like a script editor for The Simpsons who'd briefly joined a religious cult and then discovered Foucault. Such is life.

The golden age of Luncheon Vouchers ended ten yearsago. For ten years Mickey had been saying, "The goldenage of Luncheon Vouchers is over." And that's what Archieloved about O'Connell's. Everything was remembered,nothing was lost. History was never revised orreinterpreted, adapted or whitewashed. It was as solid andas simple as the encrusted egg on the clock.

When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.

They had nothing to say to each other. A five-year age gap between siblings is like a garden that needs constant attention. Even three months apart allows the weeds to grow up between you.

A writer's duty is to register what it is like for him or her to be in the world.

She loved you in the morning because the day was new.