To me, writing is a very physical process. I lay out the entire book with the two narratives side by side on my bedroom floor, and just get down on my hands and knees and start looking at it in that physical space. "Does this really follow from this? Should this be here or elsewhere?" I will literally cut the paper into paragraphs. I'll cut it into segments and move the segments around from one narrative to the other until I feel that I've found the natural structure.

Chicago has disappointed her enemies and astonished the world

His weakness was his belief that evil had boundaries.

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.

Great murderers, like great men in other walks of activity, have blue eyes.

I'm very perverse. If someone tells me I have to read a book, I'm instantly disinclined to do so.

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