Things hardly ever work on the first try. We'll make another, a better one.

Radio - and perhaps airplanes, and then of course, the atom bomb - was the preeminent technology of the first half of the 20th century. It was how the Third Reich controlled its citizens, spread lies, and disseminated fear.

So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?

Here's what I mean by the miracle of language. When you're falling into a good book, exactly as you might fall into a dream, a little conduit opens, a passageway between a reader's heart and a writer's, a connection that transcends the barriers of continents and generations and even death ... And here's the magic. You're different. You can never go back to being exactly the same person you were before you disappeared into that book.

Anyone who has spent a few nights in a tent during a storm can tell you: The world doesn't care all that much if you live or die.

You don't say, I'm going to be a writer when I grow up - at least I didn't.

Travel definitely affects me as a writer.