The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.

The bird music sank into her, like a song you used to know but forgot long ago. You hear a piano play it some day, and for a minute you feel a happy pain, but you don't know why. Bird felt like that.

I think Clinton fatigue was a real thing. It's just hard to get comfortable with Gore - it was hard for him to project who he is, the person people know in private.

I am surprised by what people expect of me.

It's what I love about what I do and the life that I'm able to have and be able to just be so normal one day and be here the next...I feel so lucky to be able to do what I do.

Also, there are seats in the diner that always fall off the table. If you have a scene where you're packing up at the end of the day and putting them on the table, they just slide off.

I'm the only one who still believes in Santa Claus!

Now of all the idealist abominations that make society pestiferous I doubt if there be any so mean as that of forcing self-sacrifice on a woman under the pretense that she likes it.

You can't plan to reach another person on a deep level, it just happens. So those are the moments that I think I really live for.

Governments oppress people, but so do mobs. You need to avoid both to make progress.

We need more pessimism that the future might be a lot worse, and we need more optimism that the future might be better.