Even if something within me is ugly, writing is a pretty good place to play with that thing and to begin to really see it.

I think it is time for a new pride in the intellectual life, and a new impatience with people who take pride in ignorance, or somehow use "elite" to mean "person who has taken the time to know" and then are eager to dismiss, say, striving, or the notion that improving one's self out of difficult conditions is a noble thing.

In a certain way, we're always toggling back and forth between the absolute and the relative, if that makes sense.

What evil does first in the world, maybe, is distract us from our pursuit of goodness.

So many people mentioned this at these rallies. You go to these things and it's kind of like an oldies concert. I mean, it's not hostile.

What was fun for me with this book [Lincoln in the Bardo] was to start out with the principle that went, "We're going to fight every day to make this not a novel; make it too short to be a novel." And then with that principle in place, the book sort of starts to say, "Okay, but I really need this. I really need some historical nuggets." And you're like, "All right, but keep it under control."

Equality has always been extant but some of us just didn't know it.