If God had meant Harvard professors to appear in People magazine, She wouldn't have invented The New York Review of Books.

The dark aftermath of the frontier, of the vast promise of possibility this country first offered, is an inflated sense of American entitlement today. We want what we want, and we want it now. Easy credit. Fast food. A straight shot down the interstate from point A to point B. The endless highway is crowded with the kinds of cars large enough to take a mountain pass in high snow. Instead they are used to take children from soccer practice to Pizza Hut. In the process they burn fuel like there's no tomorrow. Tomorrow's coming.

My most pronounced writing habit is trying not to write.

I think anyone who comes upon a Nautilus machine suddenly will agree with me that its prototype was clearly invented at some time in history when torture was considered a reasonable alternative to diplomacy.

I hadn't written a love story before and I hadn't written a novel with a happy ending before.

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

I've always had a certain facility with words.