Women had been on the verge of taking over the world-the Western world, anyway. Then some sexist pig in Silicon Valley invented the cell phone and women took a sidetrack on which all four billion of them would soon be happily talking to each other twenty-four hours a day, getting nothing else done, and Men Would Be Back.

Catholics don't scream about Jesus, they scream about the bishop.

Nuts don’t come in bunches. Only grapes do.

With most of my books, I'll actually go out and look at the setting. If you describe things carefully, it kind of makes the scene pop.

There's something about marriage that is not as intensely romantic or interesting as a couple's first meeting.

You have the feeling that if you get a Pulitzer, you're somehow set for life.

When you're building a character, or at least when I'm building a character, you start saying, 'How am I going to make people like him?'