Love is a general emotion. Marriage is exactingly specific.

In his 30 years of broadcasting and publishing fiction, Garrison Keillor has set the laugh bar pretty high.

Somehow, knowing that Alzheimer's is coming mocks all one's aspirations - to tell stories, to think through certain issues as only a novel can do, to be recognised for one's accomplishments and hard work - in a way that old familiar death does not.

I love to write about sex. You just have to make it idiosyncratic. You have to have a strong comprehension of your characters, and write it from their point of view. It's really fun. It's not erotic.

Ignorance is a self-generating state of mind; one of its characteristics is that it doesn't recognize itself as ignorance.

There weren't too many books by women that were taught in school, so I read those on my own, and the books I read were as accessible as the ones we were reading in school.

English majors understand human nature better than economists do.