Before, I was always trying to make my relationships work by means of willpower and forced affability. This time I didn't have to strive for anything….

Savor the imminent weirdness of the day..

When readers don't like the book, it's usually because they feel that romantic love is pass or somehow needs more irony..

Say what you want about it, Hell is story-friendly... The mechanisms of hell are nicely attuned to the mechanisms of narrative. Not so the pleasures ….

As the poet says, all happy couples are alike, it's the unhappy ones who create the stories. I'm no longer a story. Happiness has made me fade into r….

If you want to see the consequences of ideas, write a story. If you want to see the consequences of belief, write a story in which somebody is acting….

In February, the overcast sky isn’t gloomy so much as neutral and vague. It’s a significant factor in the common experience of depression among the l….

The point is that although love may die, what is said on its behalf cannot be consumed by the passage of time, and forgiveness is everything..

Literature is not an instruction manual..

A novel is not a summary of its plot but a collection of instances, of luminous specific details that take us in the direction of the unsaid and unse….

As my mother once said to me, ‘They’re quite crazy, dear – men are. What you look for is one of them whose insanity is large enough, and calm and gen….

Gainfully unemployed, very proud of it, too..

At its best, fiction is not a diversion but a means of knowing the world..

In truth, there are only two realities: the one for people who are in love or love each other, and the one for people who are standing outside all th….

When you’re in love you don’t have to do a damn thing. You can just be. You can just stay quiet in the world. You don’t have to move an inch..

Literature is not a sack race. There aren't real winners and losers in the Republic of Letters..

Every relationship has at least one really good day. What I mean is, no matter how sour things go, there's always that day. That day is always in you….

Forget art. Put your trust in ice cream..

When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story..

Because it is the Midwest, no one really glitters because no one has to, it's more of a dull shine, like frequently used silverware..

Needing something is not the same thing as being interested in the thing itself..