Rarely does one see a squirrel tremble.

I like books that expose me to people unlike me and books that do battle against caricature or simplification. That, to me, is the heroic in fiction.

Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived.

It's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe.

Women often have a great need to portray themselves as sympathetic and pleasing, but we're also dark people with dark thoughts.

Your mid-thirties is a good time because you know a fair amount, you have some self-control.

Boys are just boys after all, but sometimes girls really seem to be the turn of a pale wrist, or the sudden jut of a hip, or a clutch of very dark hair falling across a freckled forehead. I'm not saying that's what they really are. I'm just saying sometimes it seems that way, and that those details (a thigh mole, a full face flush, a scar the precise shape and size of a cashew nut) are so many hooks waiting to land you.