To understand any plea for further consideration of a group you don't know anything about to be some form of, quote, political correctness. These things are bubbling right under us.

Life is short, very short, and what are we doing here if not trying to become more generous and loving?

I think it was a big revelation to me earlier in my life that people who appear to be evil are actually not. In other words, nobody wakes up in the morning and says, "Yuck, yuck, yuck, I'm gonna be evil."

The old and honorable American notion, that a person who works hard should be able to live in freedom and security, with dignity - seems to have taken on a secondary status.

In my work, and in my psyche, there's some very sentimental, traditional, conventional side that's always in argument with a more radical, sarcastic side. Some of my stories are really sentimental, but they're layered over with weird, satirical stuff.

To me that really would be the essence of kindness, to have one's awareness so developed and refined that you could tell just what was needed, and not do any more or any less, and maybe not even be aware of what you had done, except it would be a helpful thing because of how fully present you were. Well, as Aerosmith once famously said: Dream on.

With nonfiction, I go in trying to be really honest about what my preconceptions are.