There is something I have noticed about desire, that it opens the eyes and strikes them blind at the same time.

When I came home for the summer after my first year of college, I told my mother that my best friend and I were driving to California. She laughed out loud - 2,000 miles in a what? Well, my best friend had an old Chevy. What could go wrong?

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.

The essence of charity ... was not deciding what others needed and giving it to them, but giving them what they wanted.

There can never be such a thing as a free market, because it is human nature to cheat, monopolize, and buy off others so as to corner the market.

A child who is protected from all controversial ideas is as vulnerable as a child who is protected from every germ. The infection, when it comes- and it will come- may overwhelm the system, be it the immune system or the belief system.

Because your goal is a complete rough draft of a novel, and every rough draft, by being complete, is perfect.