“The subject matter is ‘relatable,’ as my students like to say. Better still, though, is what you can learn about the craft of writing from this marvelous book. . . .”

A damnably readable, streamlined, yet deeply researched work. Skipping the ancestors and aftermath of conventional biography,

My father was a golden boy from a very small town. He won a very prestigious law scholarship to NYU Law School, and there in Greenwich Village, he met my mother, who was very young, fresh off the boat from Germany.

I myself am consummately middle class. We grew up in upper-middle-class suburbs in Oklahoma City, and thats very much the same ethos as what Richard Yates and John Cheever wrote about.

Above all this is the story of a touching young man who insisted on being something better than simply the smartest person in the room.

The funniest novel you’ve never read. . . . Afternoon Men is a revelation to sophisticated readers of every stripe, but especially to a certain kind of artist manqu on the brink of discovering that life is a more difficult business than he ever had reason to expect. . . .

Any astronaut can tell you you’ve got to do everything you can to learn about your life support system and then do everything you can to take care of it.

You have to go broke three times to learn how to make a living.

What I learned is that in business you must make decisions based on facts, not react with your heart.

Learning is finding out what you already know.

Everyone goes through adversity in life, but what matters is how you learn from it.

I’ve learned that something constructive comes from every defeat.

When you want to win a game, you have to teach. When you lose a game, you have to learn.

Aerodynamics is mathematics for those who haven’t learned to do calculus. In my case, too, for one who hasn’t learned to add or multiply, at least the first time.