And because love, real love, is not so easily shed.

I'm really into the rights of immigrants, the rights of the working poor. I'm one of those little activist types. I probably would have just gone to law school. And the scary part is that I was one of those kids who always tested really well. You put a test in front of me, and I would have been like do-do-do-do-do. I probably would have been some community lawyer somewhere - if anything, that's probably what I would have been doing.

This country has such little sense of itself sometimes, I'm astonished. America is one of the biggest myth-making countries, whether we're talking about how many books are published, how many movies we make. But the greatest myth of all is what America is.

She had reason to doubt him; he was real good at planning but real bad at doing.

Part of it is eight years of a black president, and white America still lost their [minds] about that. Part of it is a Republican politics of vicious, vicious partisan [stuff] that has completely poisoned what we would call the political rhetorical sphere. All of these things come together in a perfect storm.

Then you look at her and smile a smile your dissembling face will remember until the day you die. Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel. This is how you lose her.

I love the kookiness of our speech. Speech is like wonderful magic and poetry in itself. I've always had to crib a lot from what I've heard.