What makes us threaten the things we want most?

I'm tempted to do everything. And sometimes I think, "Oh, come on. You can stick that detail somewhere."

It turns out that our intuition is a greater genius than we are.

I don't think conservativism is about a deficiency. I think it's about a commitment to an ideology that has to in some ways devalue the usefulness of empathy. I do think empathy can be learned. And enhanced.

I do find stories - or literary fiction - an apt form for analyzing the world. And especially for trying to imagine the other. An agenda, again, that seems more important now than ever.

What makes us threaten the things we want most?

I channel the rote and the new and unseen. My head has always been the busiest of crossroads, a festival of happy and unhappy arrivals. In the hours before daybreak when I was a boy, god sent me words as visitors.