Baseball serves as a good model for democracy in action: Every player is equally important and each has a chance to be a hero.

My Aunt Ida at age eighty-three: 'Yeah,' she said, 'I'll be dead pretty soon. And frankly, I don't give a damn.'

I am hopeful, though not full of hope, and the only reason I don't believe in happy endings is because I don't believe in endings.

Alaska is our biggest, buggiest, boggiest state. Texas remains our largest unfrozen state. But mountainous Utah, if ironed out flat, would take up more space on a map than either.

I love America because it is a confused, chaotic mess - and I hope we can keep it this way for at least another thousand years. The permissive society is the free society.

For women, the sexual act is a means to a higher end. For a man, it is an end in itself.

My notion of a great novel is something like a five-hundred-page shaggy-dog story, with only the punch line omitted.