I don't know why, but the older I get the more interested I get in my parents' marriage. And it's interesting to be married yourself, too, because there is an inevitable comparison.

That's what books are for... to travel without moving an inch.

Fiction is the only way I know a human being can inhabit the mind of another human being.

Pack a pillow and blanket and see as much of the world as you can.You will not regret it.

I am drawn to any story that makes me want to read from one sentence to the next. I have no other criterion.

A bicultural upbringing is a rich but imperfect thing

Pet names are a persistant remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.

Somehow, bad news, however ridden with static, however filled with echoes, always manages to be conveyed.

The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace.

That the last two letters in her name were the first two in his, a silly thing he never mentioned to her but caused him to believe that they were bound together.

It didn't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My name was different. I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.

You are the one who can stretch your own horizon.

We are all dying. Every single day that we are alive.

Do you know how hard it is to say nothing? When every atom of you strains to do the opposite? I had practiced not saying anything the whole way from the airport, and it was still nearly killing me.

Sports kept me off the streets. It kept me from getting into what was going on, the bad stuff.

The story is not in the words; it's in the struggle.

The fiction Im most interested in has lines of reference to the real world.

There is no man who has not some interesting associations with particular scenes, or airs, or books, and who does not feel their beauty or sublimity enhanced to him by such connections.

Always remember that you are bigger than the moment, you are more than anything that could ever happen to you.

It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than it is to apply them.

I like to sing covers of songs that are at the extreme ends from what I usually listen to.