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

I thought some of the stories were neat; I liked some of the liturgy and some of the songs. If you're a writer you have some inclination to pay attention. I didn't just tune it out and think about baseball. So, it had an effect on me.

Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.

Know the story before you fall in love with your first sentence. If you don’t know the story before you begin the story, what kind of a storyteller are you? Just an ordinary kind, just a mediocre kind – making it up as you go along, like a common liar.

When you legislate personal belief, you're in violation of freedom of religion.

It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived.

...I suddenly realized what small towns are. They are places where you grow up with the peculiar-you live next door to the strange and the unlikely for so long that everything and everyone become commonplace.