Realism is to fiction what gravity is to walking: a confinement that allows dancing under the right circumstances.

One of the principals of composition, I would say, in fiction, is you want to do what you can do a lot of. You want to do what you're enthusiastic about and what rings your bell. In this case, almost every decision I made was on that basis.

He was a father. That's what a father does.Eases the burdens of those he loves. Saves the ones he loves from painful last images that might endure for a lifetime.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

It was that impossible thing: happiness that does not wilt to reveal the thin shoots of some new desire rising from within it.

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.

We have to move toward specificity, intelligence, facts, proof, and mutual affection. What I think people have to do now is be very, very assertive about the utter essentiality of intellectual undertakings.