I suspect there are two kinds of novelists. Those who have a point of view and have something to say and then write a novel in order to say that thing, and those of us who write the book in order to find out what we think about that thing.

He sighed. It was a long sigh, weary and worldly-wise. The kind of sigh you could picture God heaving after six days of hard work and looking forward to some serious cosmic R&R, only to be handed a report by an angel concerning a problem with someone eating an apple.

You know what killed off the dinosaurs, Whateley? We did. In one barbecue.

The strangest part of being so well known is definitely getting a New Yorker profile. It's a wonderful, strange process, like seeing yourself through a distorting mirror.

Sometimes big things happen, and they echo. Those echoes crash across worlds. They are the ripples in the fabric of things. Often they manifest as storms. Reality is a fragile thing, after all.

I thought, I'm going to die. And, thinking that, I was determined to live.

I imagine the world dividing into the people who want to feed their children, and the ones shooting at them.