Not too many people work in a job where, waiting out there are three or four hundred people who are paid to tear apart what you've done. And often they are brighter than you are, or they know more about the subject than you do, or they wish they had written a book themselves, or done a lot better. Or they just don't like it! And you have to live with it.

You write that first draft really to see how it's going to come out.

For this is the journey that men and women make, to find themselves. If they fail in this, it doesn't matter much else what they find.

I was born to a woman I never knew and raised by another who took in orphans. I do not know my background, my lineage, my biological or cultural heritage. But when I meet someone new, I treat them with respect.... For after all, they could be my people.

The chief character in this narrative is the Caribbean Sea, one of the world's most alluring bodies of water, a rare gem among the oceans, defined by the islands that form a chain of lovely jewels to the north and east

I wondered how a man ever got an English girl into bed. What did they do with her hockey stick?

The extreme geniality of San Francisco's economic, intellectual and political climate makes it the most varied and challenging city in the United States.