there are people who read my work and accuse me of being political! As far as I'm concerned that's like accusing a dog of having a bark!

But I've swallowed my pride before, that's for sure. I'm practically lined with my mistakes on the inside like a bad-wallpapered bathroom.

In the places that call me out, I know I'll recover my wordless childhood trust in the largeness of life and its willingness to take me in.

I never think that anything I'm writing is bluntly political in any way. I'm not going for commentary.

Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget you have one of your own. That is why you read it, and might even sit up in bed till early dawn, throwing your whole tomorrow out of whack, simply to find out what happens to some people who, you know perfectly well, are made up.

the novel is inherently a political instrument, regardless of its subject. It invites you - more than invites you, induces you - to live inside another person's skin. It creates empathy. And that's the antidote to bigotry. The novel doesn't just tell you about another life, which is what a newspaper would do. It makes you live another life, inhabit another perspective. And that's very important.

There is something in us that loves certain disasters and the fever of this moment and surrendering to that.