being a parent is not transaction ... we do not get what we give. It is the ultimate pay-it-forward endeavor: we are good parents not so they will be loving enough to stay with us but so they will be strong enough to leave us.

A life of unremitting caution, without the carefree - or even, occasionally, the careless - may turn out to be half a life.

I'm just remembering myself at 22 or 23. I was all engine and no steering. (Laughter) I had the wheels but I had no steering. I do think it's true that when you're younger, you're more likely to listen to all the naysayers, and people are always telling you how you ought to behave and what kind of job you should get and how you should look.

I hope readers will do what I do when I read a novel I like: talk in ways that will illuminate their own lives.

And sometimes you do everything right and something bad just happens. It's as simple, and as scary, as that.

The misdeeds of ordinary men can be buried with them, and their lives described in half-truths that are really half-lies. But not a public man. Particularly not this one.

Life is so messy that the temptation to straighten it up is very strong. And the results always illusory.