Ignorant free speech often works against the speaker. That is one of several reasons why it must be given rein instead of suppressed.

The life of a good dog is like the life of a good person, only shorter and more compressed.

I'm going to live long enough to live in an America that will assume universal health care is a basic right. That will be amusing and terrific.

I hadn't written a love story before and I hadn't written a novel with a happy ending before.

Ethnic stereotypes are misshapen pearls, sometimes with a sandy grain of truth at their center. ... but they ignore complexity, change, and individuality.

There are those of us who believe that under certain conditions the cruelest thing you can do to people you love is to force them to live. There are those of us who define living not by whether the heart beats and the lungs lift but whether the spirit is there, whether the music box plays.

My sister is a public school teacher. She makes far far less money than I do, and gets almost no public attention for her work. Yet I believe what she does is infinitely more important and more difficult than what I do.