I begin with songs. They provide a sort of skeleton grammar for me to flesh out. Songs of longing for future tense, songs of regret for past tense, and songs of love for present tense.

Each generation of adolescents has at least two historical events that color its responses to whatever happens next.

When it comes down to it, I don't have much in the way of advice to offer you, but here it is: Read to children. Vote. And never buy anything from a man who's selling fear.

The dachshund is a perfectly engineered dog. It is precisely long enough for a single standard stroke of the back, but you aren't paying for any superfluous leg.

The trouble with illusions is that you aren't aware you have any until they are taken away from you.

I believe in God the way I believe in quarks. People whose business it is to know about quantum physics or religion tell me they have good reason to believe that quarks and God exist. And they tell me that if I wanted to devote my life to learning what they've learned, I'd find quarks and God just like they did.

Watching him with one eye, she wondered if men ever figured out that they were more appealing when they were pursuing their own work than when they were pursuing a woman.