New York has always been a place where it is possible to have memories without the experience that conventionally precede them.

A good analogy [Charlie Hebdo] in lots of ways is "South Park" - the hugely popular American cartoon show - and the things that the "South Park" creators have created, like "The Book Of Mormon," the Broadway musical. If I were a devout Mormon, I would be offended by a lot of things that go on in "The Book Of Mormon," right? It mocks mercilessly the pretensions to truth of Mormonism and the pretensions to virtue of Mormon missionaries.

I think I'm more intensely opinionated when I speak; more agreeably balanced when I write.

The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life.

I don't miss the obligation to be opinionated, but I do regret the chance to share a joy.

We breathe in our first language, and swim in our second.

Of all the alchemies of human connection-sex and childbirth and marriage and friendship-the strangest is this: You can stand up and tell a story that is made entirely, embarrassingly, of "I's," and a listening audience somehow turns each "I" into a "me." This alchemy, of self-absorption into shared experience, is the alchemy of all literature.