That is how I came to think that heavy and hard was the beginning of living, real living; and though I might not end up with a mark on my cheek, I had no doubt that I would end up with a mark somewhere.

Love and hatred don't take turns; they exist side by side at the same time. And one's duty, one's obligation every day, is to choose to follow the nobler one.

I was just looking at moving to Cambridge, and a house I was looking at cost a million dollars. Because somehow, that's what a house costs. And I was thinking, "How can it be?" And I was thinking, "What am I doing? Am I going to be Niall Ferguson, that horrible man?

Like father like son, like mother like daughter!

If you just sit there, and you're a writer, you're bound to write crap. A lot of American writing is crap. And a lot of American writers are professionals.

The history of race relations in America is very different than something like the Holocaust.

I write out of defiance.