Pat Robertson at a national convention, equipped with delegates, certainly remains a terrible sight. He is a charlatan of Chaucerian dimensions.

It's good fun to create an unpredictable character. When he comes into the room, I don't know what he's going to do - I have to find my way.

Perhaps there are other bits of my life that would take on content, take on shadow, if only I read more and thought less about money.

Addictions do come in handy sometimes: at least you have to get out of bed for them.

Love is blind; but it makes you see the blind man; teetering on the roadside . . .

My 12-year-old daughter said to me, "Enough with the subtitles, Daddy, for crying out loud." Because they always seem to cloud the issue rather than clarify it.

Novelists don't age as quickly as philosophers, who often face professional senility in their late twenties.