College wasn't like the real world. In the real world people dropped names based on their renown. In college, people dropped names based on their obscurity.

Comedy is a distortion of what is happening, and there will always be something happening.

If you talk to geneticists they are constantly finding that your genes are being switched on and off because of the environment. Genes alone do not determine an exact path in your life.

It was always embarrassing when professors assigned their own books. Even Madeleine, who found all the reading hard going, could tell that Zipperstein’s contribution to the field was reformulative and second-tier.

The Pulitzer isn't a physical object. You can't hold it in your hand. You get some money ($7,500 in my day), and you get a little Tiffany's paperweight with your name on it and the image of Joseph Pulitzer suspended in the crystal. When people see my 'Pulitzer' (I keep it in my sock drawer), they are pretty amazed at its meagerness.

The Pulitzer Prize is an idea; it's a vote of confidence. Like literature, it exists purely in the mind.