I’m waiting for the day when Rush Limbaugh’s pharmacist writes a book.

Sometimes you're going to be faced with situations where the line isn't clear between what's right and what's wrong.Your heart will tell you to do one thing and your brain will tell you to do something different. In the end, all that's left is to look at both sides and go with your best judgment.

Here's my rule: You always want to pay cash for your own books, because if they look at the name on the credit card and then they look at the name on the book jacket, then there's this look of such profound sympathy for you that you had to resort to this. It really is withering.

My books are character-driven. They're not driven by the story.

Mrs. Bonneville never buckled her seat belt, even though it was required by state law; an ardent libertarian, she opposed government meddling in all matters of personal choice.

It's actually not very hard to re-set between the adult novels and the ones for younger readers. The narrative voices are very similar, the smartass attitude, the environmental battles. Kids love books that are irreverent and challenge authority, when authority is arbitrary, greedy or foolish. They also love it when you make fun of grownups, and I've spent my whole life as a writer doing that.

If you write satire, the guilty pleasure these days is that there's just so much material about. On the other hand, if you have a family it can be depressing.