I think Americans suspect, without even being able to articulate it, that we're at the end of the American century; that we're at the end of the 100 or 125 or 150 years when we were the undisputed arbiter and leader of the world.

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.

Well, we tell our kids things like 'don't gossip' and then an hour later they hear us on the phone. Stuff like that.

knowledge of our own mortality is the greatest gift God ever gives us.

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.

Ideas are like pizza dough, made to be tossed around, and nearly every book represents what my son's third grade teacher refers to as a "teachable moment.

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.