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

Vets do what doctors used to - diagnose the injury or the condition, patch it up as best they can and remind you that these things happen and that in life we are also in the midst of death.

Men are competent in groups that mimic the playground, incompetent in groups that mimic the family

The only siblings I have are half-siblings. My nuclear family would have been an extra-suffocating threesome. Instead, I have an interesting brother and sister, in-laws, and darling nephews.

In many ways, being honest about 'Huckleberry Finn' goes right to the heart of whether we can be honest about our heritage and our identity as Americans.

Writing novels is an essentially amateur activity.

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