The Church does an enormous amount of good, and it carries one of the most valuable messages imaginable - that you should love your neighbor as yourself, and that if you have two coats you should give one to the man who has none.

I think when people keep saying to you, "You're good at this," you just keep doing it.

Fifty years ago, teachers said their top discipline problems were talking, chewing gum, making noise, and running in the halls. The current list, by contrast, sounds like a cross between a rap sheet and the seven deadly sins.

I'm always keeping an eye on the court. Also, when the members of Congress came to his office during the budget debacle of a year and a half back and said, "We want to de-fund Planned Parenthood," he said, "Not going to happen." Those apparently were more or less his exact words.

I think I'm like most novelists in that my books have gotten farther and farther away from autobiography the longer I've been writing them.

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

I love having a president who I think is smarter than I am.