There are more people in America that love guns and want guns for themselves and everyone else than there are not. It is also true that liberals who don't want guns are puny by and large. They're not risking anything, all they're doing is saying they don't like something. Liberals are quick to say this should happen and this should not happen, but they don't do anything about it much.

Maybe I'm a serial regional writer. First here, then there, across the map.

The thing about being a writer is that you never have to ask, 'Am I doing something that's worthwhile?' Because even if you fail at it, you know that it's worth doing.

Things happen when people are not where they belong, and the world moves forward and back by that principle.

There are more people in America that love guns and want guns for themselves and everyone else than there are not. It is also true that liberals who don't want guns are puny by and large. They're not risking anything, all they're doing is saying they don't like something. Liberals are quick to say this should happen and this should not happen, but they don't do anything about it much.

I had a Tourette's period. And obsessive compulsive disorder. Things would get in my brain that I couldn't get out of my brain.

I think that's the thing that memoir can do more than anything it does; it testifies and bears witness to the existence of people whose lives, pleasures and virtues would never have been testified to without my having done it. That makes me really glad.