I think this is the other big issue that is not going away: Do we really believe that bit in the Constitution or not? I think we do.

My heart goes out to him. Sort of. Because empathy depends on how you've spent your day.

For me, when I'm coming up to a place where I have to make somebody up, it's almost like driving and taking your hands off the wheel.

Suddenly absurdism wasn’t an intellectual abstraction, it was actually realism. You could see the way that wealth was begetting wealth, wealth was begetting comfort — and that the cumulative effect of an absence of wealth was the erosion of grace.

I would kind of, you know, go stand next to some unlucky guy and say eventually, Hi, I'm George. You know, I'm with The New Yorker. I'm a liberal. I'm somewhat left of Gandhi. Do you want to talk? And, you know, they always did.

As a kid, I had a real fascination with perverse, off-color, and kind of risky things, and I also had a very sanctimonious Catholic, purist side.

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.