I write about kids growing up, I write a lot about schools and parents, and all of my experiences with those things have been suburban experiences.

Maybe that's what we look for in the people we love, the spark of unhappiness we think we know how to extinguish.

When things don't go well, it helps to think of yourself as a genius and the rest of the world as a bunch of idiots.

Every minute we were together, I felt like I was wandering in the dark through a strange house, groping for a light switch. And then, whenever I found one and turned it on, the bulb was dead.

Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.

I read 'The Great Gatsby' in high school and was hypnotized by the beauty of the sentences and moved by the story about the irrevocability of lost love.

Once you'd broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you were connected forever, whether you liked it or not.

It just took some people a little longer than others to realize how few words they needed to get by, how much of life they could negotiate in silence.

Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.

I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.

He made me think of all the books I hadn't read, and all the ones I'd read but hadn't fully understood.

History was ignorant and had a mean streak, so it tended to repeat.

The missiles come first, and the justifications come second.

Give me a Sunday morning, that's full of grace, A simple life and I'll be okay, here in small town U.S.A.

The mind that engages in subjects of too great variety becomes confused and weakened.

Thought paceth like a hoary sage, but imagination hath wings as an eagle.

Actually, the problem in the world is that there are too many rich people.

Everybody wants to go to heaven. They just don't want God to be there when they get there.

There is always room for a person of force and they make room for many.

Hayek is amongst the top 2-3 of the all the people who ever influenced me.

I never lost a friend I wanted to keep.