Only when she smiled at him was he finally able to relax.

Perhaps living in fear can drive all devils out of a person.

I like a bit of spunk in a lady

she'd played mother and wives. Women in narratives were always defined by their relations.

Also the fact that he's a guy. A girl screws around like Lotto and she's like diseased. Untouchable. But a guy can stick it to a million places and everyone just thinks he's doing what boys do.

Doomed people celebrate peace with sky bombs.

It was mathematical, marriage. Not, as one might expect, additional. It was exponential.

Mathilde and Lotto held hands in the taxi going to brunch, communicating, not speaking.

What she did not tell him balanced neatly with what she did.

When your family dismisses you, like Lotto's did, you create your own family

Don't they understand what fiction is?

One needs longing to live and enemies make one long for them.

we create ourselves as we go along

I'm just a down-to-earth guy.

I was doing the family grocery shopping accompanied by two children, an event I hope to see included in the Olympics in the near future.

Anybody with ability can play in the big leagues. To last as long as I did with the skills I had, with the numbers I produced, was a triumph of the human spirit.

We are trained to analyze problems and create solutions. We forget that marriage is a relationship, not a project to be completed or a problem to solve.

The longer it takes you to become successful, the harder it will be for somebody else to take it away from you.

That makes classical music work, the ability to improvise.

Time and space recede and blast away like a universe expanding forever outward, and leaving only darkness and the two of us on its periphery, darkness and breathing and touch.

The cell phone has become the adult's transitional object, replacing the toddler's teddy bear for comfort and a sense of belonging.