It´s natural to want someone you love to do what you want, or what you think would be good for them, but you have to let everything happen to them. You can't interfere with people you love any more than you're supposed to interfere with people you don't even know. And that's hard, ..., because you often feel like interfering -you want to be the one who makes the plans.

The characters in my novels, from the very first one, are always on some quixotic effort of attempting to control something that is uncontrollable - some element of the world that is essentially random and out of control.

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

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

And never forget, there is memory.

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.

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