My understanding of kindness is that we are hoping to be truly beneficial in every situation, and that this desire means a whole suite of things: being nicer, sure, but also being more aware, more present, more articulate, more fearless, less habituated, etc., etc. And sometimes even being firm, or having an edge, or even being angry.

When I wrote that [Donald] Trump piece, I had this uncomfortable experience of sensing a lot of things that were nascent, that I couldn't quite articulate. And one of them was this move toward anti-intellectualism. An anti-love move, even.

Sometimes I just turn on the TV and I'm like, wait a minute, that guy [Donald Trump]? It's incredible that he did all those things and he still won. It's hard to process.

[In the moment of reading writer and reader] are both briefly their best selves, or at least better selves. A flawed human being writes something and 60 years later a reader picks up the book and something in them rises to meet it.

Whatever you love, that will be an influence. It just will. So in effect the young writer's job is: go out and find some stuff to love.

If you want to explore a political idea in the highest possible way, you embody it in the personal, because that's something that no one can deny.

In the moment of reading, the writer comes up to the surface and the reader comes up to the surface and they kiss, like two fish. That actually does happen.