I like narrative, and I ultimately am in love with the men and women I write about, most of them.

In our public life, California is on the verge of being a failed state, and no state has failed in the history of this country.

The Irish didn't read and write for a couple of thousand years, and I think we developed good memories and recall. We have a sense of the revelatory detail. I look for them.

It's highly competitive to be here. People don't come to California to drop out anymore. It's a very striving place.

I think California is playing a game of brinkmanship that's very dangerous. Why is it 50 or 60 years ago we had the capacity to lay down the physical, psychological, cultural, public infrastructure of a global mega-state, and today we are on the verge of being Honduras?

I like narrative, and I ultimately am in love with the men and women I write about, most of them.

I believe that's a form of dangerous stereotyping, to ascribe permanent victimhood to any group. Groups have suffered powerful injustice, and yet when you say that, you also have to say that they triumphed, that they prevailed.