That heartbreaking moment when you finish an amazing book, and you are forced to return to reality.

We write about what we don't know about what we know.

I loved the comradeship of the sixties and the seventies, and I still maintain friendships with the people I worked with then - the ones that are still alive. That's one of the great gifts of our political movements, great friendships . . . and also a few enmities.

The only recognizable feature of hope is action.

My family were Russian Jews. They got you to read as soon as you could. And then assumed you would read a lot. People didn't really tell stories but they were good talkers. That's important for a writer, to hear speakers.

All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest, it seems, is an interest in life, good, bad or peculiar.

There is a long time in me between knowing and telling.