While liberals had embraced Obama as someone who had left-wing progressive ideas, the truth is that by personality he's a very incremental guy.

All parents should be aware that when they mock or curse gay people, they may be mocking or cursing their own child.

People have writer's block not because they can't write, but because they despair of writing eloquently.

Grief remains one of the few things that has the power to silence us. It is a whisper in the world and a clamor within. More than sex, more than faith, even more than its usher death, grief is unspoken, publicly ignored except for those moments at the funeral that are over too quickly, or the conversations among the cognoscenti, those of us who recognize in one another a kindred chasm deep in the center of who we are.

When hot dogs like Mr. D'Amato or the Republican apologist Roger Ailes say that Whitewater is worse than Watergate, it's because they're suffering from a disease. It's called bull-imia, and it's the regurgitation of patent hyperbole.

Decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

Novels are usually built on conflict, sometimes very, very difficult conflict. It's why men write war novels - because there you go, there's the conflict writ large.