We permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it - and reward it in all manner of ways.

All I say is: Let us leave les folles alone; let's just leave them be. Don't judge them. You are not superior to them - don't put them down.

I have a very poor record at multiple choice questions.

The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it's not work for me.

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice. Not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God. I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.

Ever since the Christmas of 1953, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection; the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving-Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home.

The first of my father's illusions was that bears could survive the life led by human beings; the second was that human beings could survive a life in hotels.