Our lives carry us along in ways we cannot control, and almost nothing stays with us. It dies when we do, and death is something that happens to us every day.

Writing is a solitary business. It takes over your life. In some sense, a writer has no life of his own. Even when he’s there, he’s not really there.

To care about words, to have a stake in what is written, to believe in the power of books - this overwhelms the rest, and beside it one's life becomes very small.

Everyone’s searching for someone to end the pain of loneliness. Even the darkest of souls wants a shot at redemption.

The future is certain. It is just not known.

Mourning is never really complete. The mappings of the old play remain in the cortex, like those mappings of the phantom limb.

Ambition destroys its possessor.

He (Macaulay) has occasional flashes of silence that make his conversation perfectly delightful.

It's funny, because I did all of these interviews as soon as I had the baby, and they were asking questions, and I really didn't have an idea of anything, because I was so blurry.

Building a solid organ like the liver in the lab is different and harder than with an organ like the bladder because solid organs are very vascular.

Love has this in common with scruples, that it becomes embittered by the reflections and the thoughts that beset us to free ourselves.

Never surrender to cynicism, even if you suspect it would get the critics on your side.Never surrender to cynicism, even if you suspect it would get the critics on your side.