What we [writers] do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite. It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy.

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

Our relationship wasn't the sun, the moon, the stars, but it wasn't bullshit, either.

The idea that America has cornered the market on anti-immigration is ridiculous. It's a global phenomenon.

If you didn't grow up like I did then you don't know, and if you don't know it's probably better you don't judge.

In the months that follow you bend to the work, because it feels like hope, like grace--and because you know in your lying cheater's heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get.

I think that America is such an incredibly dynamic place because of immigration. We fundamentally have been a culture that's been put together from the explosions of other cultures. But it's hard for us to see. We have blinded ourselves to the reality of what our country is.