I didn't hear anybody talking about the plight of a soldier coming back home and what he'd gone through. That was why I wrote about that stuff. If somebody else had done it, I probably wouldn't have touched the subject.

How one hates to think of oneself as alone. How one avoids it. It seems to imply rejection or unpopularity.

Man's objection to love is that it dies hard: women's, that when it is dead it stays dead.

What you want to do is put people in a position where they feel connected enough to you that they're willing to collaborate with you; they're willing to show you the things that they were scared to tell you about before.

Watching him during the first several minutes of his delivery, Cecilia felt a pleasant sinking sensation in her stomach as she contemplated how deliciously self-destructive it would be, almost erotic, to be married to a man so nearly handsome, so hugely rich, so unfathomably stupid. He would fill her with his big-faced children, all of them loud, boneheaded boys with a passion for guns and football and aeroplanes.

I remember talking to someone early on after I was sober about how I suddenly felt awkward at parties. They said, 'Well, you're supposed to. Everyone feels awkward at parties.' It's an appropriate feeling to feel.