I have too many friends who tell me that they spend the first hour of every morning going through their e-mail messages. I'd like to use my time more carefully.

I think Joe Leiberman has been one of the leaders of the country... people have such a broad respect for him as a moral force.

I think all tragedies are best told with some humor. You have to relieve the darkness to let the reader get through it. Also, that life has happiness and sadness mixed together. If you told a story that was all darkness, it wouldn't be real.

Writers read essays and serious thinkers and serious readers... that is a small population.

The Book of Telling tells of a woman's journey to uncover the secret life of her father and to find herself in the process, an unusual counterpoint between personal history and the history of a young nation. Haunting, powerful, and beautifully written.

Faith is the ability to honor stillness at some moments, and at others to ride the passion and exuberance.

Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way.