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

Art is not a democracy, in fact art is the enemy of democracy

To a born-again atheist like myself, it is clear that each of us has multiple selves, talents, perceptions. But to the Roman Catholic, unity is all.

It is reasonable to assume that, by and large, what is not read now will not be read, ever. It is also reasonable to assume that practically nothing that is read now will be read later.

We were to be forever at war with somebody. We were going to fight communism everywhere on earth even if it didn't threaten us. It was a holy war, just as we've made one on terrorism and Islam, equally stupid and equally irrelevant.

I do not much care for nature, and believe that flowers belong in vases rather than loose and untidy on the ground.

Before the cards that one is dealt by life are the cards that fate has dealt: one's family.