“The hardest thing about being a writer is convincing your wife that lying on the sofa is work.”

“Perhaps one of the hardest things about having kids is realizing that you love someone more than your wife. That it's possible to love someone more than you love your wife. What's even worse is that it's a love you don't have to work at. It's just there. It just sits there, indestructible, getting stronger and stronger. While the love for your wife, the one you do have to work at, and work so very hard at, gets nothing. Gets neglected, left to fend for itself. Like a houseplant forgotten on a windowsill.”

“One of the hardest things about being alive is being with other people.”

“What no wife of a writer understands is that a writer is working when he's staring out the window.”

“What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out the window.”

“This thing about looking for someone less different... It only really worked, he realized, if you were convinced that being you wasn't so bad in the first place.”