“The ending is immense. Tell it plainly".”

“...The end is so immense, it is its own poetry. It requires little rhetoric. Just state it plainly.”

“...Don't tell me he's bisexual! Don't tell me this is more of the guy in the hallway! Don't tell me he wants us to have it off together, Philip Roth fucking Philip Roth! That, I'm afraid, is a form of masturbation too fancy even for me.”

“Memoirs lie, but fiction tells the truth.”

“Am I mistaken to think that even back then, in the vivid present, the fullness of life stirred our emotions to an extraordinary extent? Has anywhere since so engrossed you in its ocean of details? The detail, the immensity of the detail, the force of the detail,the weight of the detailthe rich endlessness of detail surrounding you in your young life like the six feet of dirt that’ll be packed on your grave when you’re dead”

“You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.”

“You go to someone and you think, 'I'll tell him this.' But why? The impulse is that the telling is going to relieve you. And that's why you feel awful later--you've relieved yourself, and if it truly is tragic and awful, it's not better, it's worse---the exhibitionism inherent to a confession has only made the misery worse.”