English majors understand human nature better than economists do.

it still astounds me, after forty years, that there is no good bread between Chicago and San Francisco.

The brave view is that talking it out helps work it out. Maybe the realistic view is that talking it out inflames the issues further. But that is America, especially these days.

The thing about Republicans is that they don't care so much about respect, but they love fear, at least in others.

I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.

The novel as a form is usually seen to be moral if its readers consider freedom, individuality, democracy, privacy, social connection, tolerance and hope to be morally good, but it is not considered moral if the highest values of a society are adherence to rules and traditional mores, the maintenance of hierarchical relationships, and absolute ideas of right and wrong. Any society based on the latter will find novels inherently immoral and subversive.

My great fear is not that I'll run out of ideas. It's that I'll run out of time.