In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution - is not my solution.

The choices a writer makes within a tradition - preferring Milton to Moliere, caring for Barth over Barthelme - constitute some of the most personal information we can have about him.

The end is simply the beginning of an even longer story.

Generally, women can't do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a family and a past. They just unhook themselves, like removing a fake beard, and skulk discreetly back into society, changed men. Unrecognizable.

Most of the cruelty in the world is just misplaced energy.

You don't come to live here unless the delusion of a reality shaped around your own desires isn't a strong aspect of your personality. A reality shaped around your own desires - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.

She did what girls generally do when they don't feel the part: she dressed it instead.