If I waited long enough and said, "Okay, so what you're saying is you liked your life a lot better when you were 30?" everybody would get real quiet and then admit that that wasn't the case, that they really felt like they were sort of growing into themselves in a way.

You realize that these accidental decisions you make about changing jobs, about moving into an apartment where you make new friends and confidants, about going to one city over another, that sometimes they're completely arbitrary decisions that you haven't put as much thought into as perhaps you should have, and yet they change the course of your whole life.

The unemployment rate among the young in the United States is still very disconcerting, although we all know it's nowhere near as bad as it is in some of the European countries, where in some places it approaches 50 percent.

The difference between government and leadership is that leadership has a soul.

I do think there's some aspect of being a novelist that is a little crazy making.

Obama doesn't seem like a burger and a beer kind of guy. I have to say, I don't find that problematic at all.

Being a reporter is as much a diagnosis as a job description.