Both [Donald] Trump and Bernie [Sanders] got to this idea of the vanishing middle class sooner and with more passion than more mainstream politicians, and benefited from it. The difference, of course, is that Bernie understood this in a more compassionate framework, and talked about it in conjunction with a revitalization of another part of the American project, which is the notion that we are all created equal, and that our laws and culture and action ought to reflect that.

There might be a different model for a literary community that's quicker, more real-time, and involves more spontaneity.

Fiction is open to whoever comes in the door, as long as you come in energetically.

While I'm doing [writing], I don't feel it.I don't think that's a failing. I think it's just a feature. Like, a feature of oneself.

I have been married to my wife, Paula, for 25 years. We have wonderful kids. Things are - it's been a really rich life, so I started thinking, is there a way to get valence a little more into the stories, the idea that, yes, things can go wrong, but also they can go right.

I do find the values in A Christmas Carol significant. It is important not to be mean and stingy and not to give up love for money.

The main thing a childhood in the Church did for me, I think, was set up the universe as a moral system. Once you've seen it that way, it always seems that way.