Combine a left-leaning upbringing with a family with direct experience of the Holocaust and someone with aspirations to write and I guess, sooner or later, that person will have a stab at writing something about the Holocaust.

What is it about men that make women so lonely?

[Memory] visits when it is hungry, not when you are.

When you're younger, you tend to be reckless about trying to find out who you are and what you can do and should do. But as you get older you become more accepting of yourself, and with that comes greater contentment.

You don't need to be seeing someone to be in love with her. You can have lost touch with her, she can have hurt you, even inexplicably. If you ever felt that you really knew her and that it was what you knew that you loved, and if you remember what it was you once knew, why is it so crazy to retain that love still?

Being an insomniac only slows me down. I try not to write at night, as I'm concerned that this will affect the quality.

He sits in his car at traffic lights on his way out sometimes and tries to estimate how many times he has sat here, waiting at these traffic lights on his way somewhere without you, hoping to meet someone with the capacity to consign you to an anecdote, to be eventually confused with others

I used to be a child. It came naturally to me. I was an adult for a time, too. That came less naturally.

You would love the way he sees you. He uses you as a weapon against himself and not merely because you did