Quotes from Stephen McCauley

It usually turned out that the people who claim they're looking to change their lives are really looking for a way to justify making the same mistakes over and over.

Can we get something out the way

If you think that would stop her, you don't much about Renata.

He'd actually had parents contact him to ask if there was anything their kids in grammar school should be doing to get ready for applying to college. Looking for sane parents was what he wanted to tell them.

Money is easier to dispense than affection, even for the most miserly.

I don't mean to be a snob about anyone else's taste or to suggest that my own is worth bragging about. I don't really have taste; I have reactions to other people's. I have opinions.

The muffins were for Carol, the woman Henry had left her for. Naturally, Carol was younger. Julie knew only one man who'd betrayed his marriage for a woman older than his wife, and it was overstating it to say she knew Prince Charles.

Honestly, I'm, like, the least religious person in the world.

The experience of writing under a pseudonym was tremendously liberating; I could write what I wanted.

I wrote two novels about a yoga studio in Los Angeles published by Penguin under the pen name Rain Mitchell.

I have always had someone in my life that I consider my reading mentor because I come from a family where reading was not emphasized or even approved of.

I think libraries give the feeling that people are there to work. It's a little bit like an artist's colony in the sense that there's some sort of shared experience. There's respect for quiet, more or less, but otherwise, there's activity.

I keep trying to write happy endings, but my books always end on more of a bittersweet note of ambiguity.

When you're sitting in the theater watching your own work be performed, you get to see people's reactions immediately. Unlike with a book, you don't have to wait for responses. That's very satisfying. Unless it's a joke that falls flat.

If you aren't a reader and you have a kid with his face buried in books, it can be a bit threatening. My parents viewed my reading as somewhat effeminate, but also subversive on some level.