It was one of those humid days when the atmosphere gets confused. Sitting on the porch, you could feel it: the air wishing it was water.

The Pulitzer Prize is an idea; it's a vote of confidence. Like literature, it exists purely in the mind.

It was amazing how it worked: the tiniest bit of truth made credible the greatest lies.

There are some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things.

He knew a lot about his grandparents - and perhaps he feels he's been endowed with abilities to go into people's heads who are long dead - but, to a certain extent, he's making it up.

If you talk to geneticists they are constantly finding that your genes are being switched on and off because of the environment. Genes alone do not determine an exact path in your life.

We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the version of the world they really believed in.