Writing is still my main career, but I would love, for instance, to serve in the New York State Assembly.

He knew very well that love could be like the most beautiful singing, that it could make death inconsequential, that it existed in forms so pure and strong that it was capable of reordering the universe. He knew this, and that he lacked it, and yet as he stood in the courtyard of the Palazzo Venezia, watching diplomats file quietly out the gate, he was content, for he suspected that to command the profoundest love might in the end be far less beautiful a thing than to suffer its absence.

Of course, you would have to be insane to hope your child grows up to be a playwright or poet. Given the odds, you would have to be quite cavalier about your children's future.

I suppose I could read more fiction, but I haven't moved in that direction. I'd like more time even though I spend six hours a day reading. People say their eyes get tired, but I've never experienced that. In college I used to read 10 hours a day. My wife says I'm obsessive compulsive. She might have a point because when I was an undergrad student we had the required reading list and the suggested reading list. I always read all the suggested reading too.

Particularly as a Jew, I don't like missionary work. I've had it focused on me, and I don't like it. Let people be what they want to be.

It's a defining difference, curiosity. I've never known a stupid person who was curious, or a curious person who was stupid.

They were dancing around the fountain, arm in arm, in an old Dutch dance, their cheeks touching, their hands entwined. They had no music; they hummed. And there was no reason for them to be dancing that Peter Lake could see, except that it was an exceptionally beautiful night.