“Without sound, celebration and grief look nearly the same.”

The context of what can be known establishes that love and indifference are forms of language, but the wise addition of punctuation allows us to believe that there are other harms – the dash gives the reader the clear signal they are coming.

A misspelled word is probably an alias for some desperate call for aid, which is bound to fail.

Eventually you stop paying attention to your own feelings when there’s nothing to be done about them.

My first book, ‘The Age of Wire and String,’ came out in 1995, and it was hardly reviewed at all.

To refrain from storytelling is perhaps one of the highest forms of respect we can pay. Those people, with no stories to circle them, can die without being misunderstood.

Among other things, autoimmune disorders are an induction into a world of unstable information and no reliable expertise.

I like big doses of grief when I read: Richard Yates, Flannery O’Connor, Kenzabaro Oe, Thomas Bernhard.

It’s lonely to listen to the pleasure of others, not that I’ve made a habit of that kind of eavesdropping. There’s joy and passion in the next room, in the next bed, but it’s not yours.

It amazes me that parents are allowed to raise kids. There’s so much power and often very little accountability.

I’m attracted to how fraught the parent-child relationship is, swerving so easily between love and hostility, with almost no plausible way to end, unless someone dies.

In some sense, prose fiction is just a way of unlocking a space. If I can unlock the space, it comes out and it’s vivid, I find that I care about it, and it’s part of me.

I work, and then I leave the office, and I’m with my kids and just sort of enjoy them on a visceral level, and I don’t feel like I’m exorcising my own deep ideas about parenthood and about how my life will come into play in my work.

In certain strains of Judaism, there’s a profound passion for the ineffable. Contemplation of God is meant to be forever elusive, because, you know, our tiny minds can’t possibly comprehend Him. If we find ourselves comprehending Him, then we can be sure we’re off track.

To me one of the amazing technologies of writing is the way it can listen in on thoughts. I don’t feel that that’s natural to other art forms in the same way.

Slamming the book shut produces a wind on the face, a weather that is copyrighted by the author, and this wind may not be deployed without permission, nor may the pages be turned without express written permission.

Mostly we’re motivated to control ourselves in public. Mostly. At home the motivation is much less clear. At home there’s a bit of a lab for bad behavior.

Life can be wonderful. Do your best not to miss it!” Enjoy what it is before it isn’t anymore. Dare to slip on a pair of bunny slippers once in a while! Surprise yourself! Enjoy the little things because one day you’ll look back and realize they were the big things!

The one thing I like about ‘Playboy’ is they don’t have the anorexic look. The women are voluptuous. So I didn’t really want to diet. I just wanted to tone up.

The Dutch look like a huge jar of marmalade.

The best way to begin is to say: ‘Balthus is a painter of whom nothing is known. And now let us have a look at the paintings’.

Pop Art looks out into the world. It doesnt look like a painting of something, it looks like the thing itself.

Yoga is a mirror to look at ourselves from within.

Don’t look too far ahead or you’ll get overwhelmed. Just do the next apparent thing. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. You’ll get through this. And when you do, you’ll feel great!

My make-up artist, she uses bronzer on the eyelids too. And also a little bit on the forehead to make everything look even.