“If you’re in your life, chance. Viewed from the outside, like a book you’re reading, it’s fate all the way.”

“The best way to get kids to read a book is to say: 'This book is not appropriate for your age, and it has all sorts of horrible things in it like sex and death and some really big and complicated ideas, and you’re better off not touching it until you’re all grown up. I’m going to put it on this shelf and leave the room for a while. Don’t open it.”

“I think it’s the books that you read when you’re young that live with you forever.”

“ubiquitous, adj.When it’s going well, the fact of it is everywhere. It’s there in the song that shuffles into your ears. It’s there in the book you’re reading. It’s there on the shelves of the store as you reach for a towel and forget about the towel. It’s there as you open the door. As you stare off into the subway, it’s what you’re looking at. You wear it on the inside of your hat. It lines your pockets. It’s the temperature.The hitch, of course, it that when it’s going badly, it’s in all the same places.”

“Getting dumped is crazy times. Like … what? You’re supposed to instantly turn off all your emotions just because he says it’s over? You’re supposed to go on with your life like nothing happened?”

“Writing isn’t my life…it’s a lovely part of my life... but it’s not my life. My life is family, friends, fishing, food…things like reading and painting and all the rest of it, and you can’t really prioritize when you’re involved with family or you’re involved in fishing, you can’t say, ‘Oh, I really should be writing.”