It's Odd Being An American Now. Most

Writing Is The Hardest Work In The World Not Involving Heavy Lifting.

The Goal Is To Be Both Disciplined And Loose, So That The Writing Does Not Turn Into A Task Or A Chore. To Leave Myself Behind, Along With The Mechanics, And Disappear Into The Lives Of My Characters.

The Library Is A Place Where Most Of The Things I Came To Value As An Adult Had Their Beginnings.

In The End, The Only Thing The True New Yorker Knows About New York Is That It Is Unknowable.

What Libraries Give You Is All Three Tenses - The Past Tense - The Present Tense In Which We Live And The Future That We Can Only Imagine. These Places Have Teachers Who Are Living And Dead And We Are Lucky To Have Them. If I Sit Here And Read Aristotle, He Is Speaking To Me Across A Thousand Years - More Than A Thousand Years. That Sense That I Am In The Company Of The Great Greatest People Who Ever Lived Is A Humbling Experience But A Liberating Experience.