To bring into the world an unwanted human being is as antisocial an act as murder.

I came out of Capitol Hill. Well, that's just not an ordinary background for a writer of the ordinary American sort.

The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes.

Somebody has to keep score and I decided I was going to do it. I'm a born score-keeper and I realize, like an umpire, that my decisions may cause distress.

Baum (Writer of THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ) was a true educator, and those who read his Oz books are often made what they were not-imaginative , tolerant, alert to wonders, life.

Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They're interested in their companies, their corporations grabbing Caspian oil.

I said, well, it's a very primitive country, the United States, and it's full of superstitions, which come out of a very fundamental religious bias, which is primitive Christianity.