Chance plays a powerful role in every life - our brains and personalities are just chemical soup, after all; a few drops here or there matter enormously - but consequences often become more serious as income levels go down.

Walking is very good for writers. There's something fundamentally useful about not talking to anybody, not looking at a screen, and being in nature - even if that nature is an urban environment.

Literature helps us transcend ourselves.

All over the world, the nativist perspective is being privileged over those who are more recent arrivals.

We think of the romance novel as a lesser form of literature, but I don't think that's true. Love is a very important aspect of human life and worth exploring.

If differences can be hidden, perhaps they aren't differences at all.

When the machine of a human being is turned on, it seems to produce a protagonist, just as a television produces an image.