You never do find out what makes you tick, and after a while it's unimportant.

When a novel comes, it's a grace. Something in the cosmos has forgiven you long enough so that you can start.

While I'm working on a book, I rarely read anything more than The New York Times. Which may have the long-term effect of flattening my style.

The art of the novel is to arrive at that artless point where your characters become more real than yourself.

People who live under fascism are not only miserable but they're full of shame. You just don't go in and inject democracy into them. They're half crazy with their own.

There are these two kinds of patriotism. There's blind patriotism, unflagging patriotism. And then there's the patriotism that says I live in a democracy and it's very important for the health and the life of this democracy that it get better all the time, not get worse.

We sail across dominions barely seen, washed by the swells of time. We plow through fields of magnetism. Past and future come together on thunderheads and our dead hearts live with lightning in the wounds of the Gods.