I'm a Catholic of the New Testament, I'm not a Catholic of the hierarchy.

I will never understand people who think that the way to show their righteous opposition to sexual freedom is to write letters full of filthy words.

Behind every door in London there are stories, behind every one ghosts. The greatest writers in the history of the written word have given them substance, given them life. And so we readers walk, and dream, and imagine, in the city where imagination found its great home.

You can get rid of the column. It's a little like staying at a hotel; you get used to the shape of the room, and then you're gone. With a novel you move into town and stay for a long time. That's both comforting and terrifying.

There are a million moving parts to raising kids, and you can't always anticipate them all, especially when they are teenagers and their peers play such a huge role in their lives. If you offer independence, there is one kind of pitfall; if you shelter them too much, there is another. And sometimes you do everything right and something bad just happens. It's as simple, and as scary, as that.

My father really, really pushed me to excel in a way that I resented for years and then realized had really worked for me.

I think the very best thing about the internet is that I can read all the London papers every day if I want to.