I don't listen to music when I write, but I do turn on appropriate music when I read portions of my manuscripts back to myself - kind of like adding a soundtrack to help shape mood.

Digression is my passion. I love telling the main stories, but in some ways, what I love most is using those narratives as a way of stringing together the interesting stories that people have kind of forgotten, and that are kind of surprising. The problem is, how do you pare stories away so that the book doesn't become a distracting jumble of material, and readers lose focus? In my experience, there's really only one way to do that. I pack it all in with the rough draft, then count on myself and my trusted readers to tell me what's good and what's not good.

I was never concretely aware of the extent of anti-Semitism in the United States and in the upper levels of the State Department.

Reading Mission to Paris is like sipping a fine Chateau Margaux: Sublime!

Time lost can never be recovered...and this should be written in flaming letters everywhere.

Reading is such a personal thing to me. I'd much rather give someone a gift certificate to a bookstore, and let that person choose his or her own books.

Leaves hung in the stillness like hands of the newly dead.