There's no reason you should write any novel quickly.

A personal injustice is stronger motivation than any instinct for philanthropy.

I certainly think Obama is the most hopeful president I've seen in the country since John Kennedy.

You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.

I think that writers are, at best, outsiders to the society they inhabit. They have a kind of detachment, or try to have.

I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave - and nothing but laughter to console them with.

Patriotism is not necessarily defined as blind devotion to a president's particular agenda - and that to dispute a presidential policy is not necessarily anti-American.