If Trump was just a piddly-ass little hotel owner some place, having the kind of character and manners that he has, he would not be worth our notice. But because he's now been based to this huge stage, then his dimensions become immense. He's not a tragic figure because he doesn't have the capacity to be tragic. But the consequences of his life and his self now are immense; they're threatening to the world and to the sanctity of human life.

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

I know you can dream your way through an otherwise fine life, and never wake up, which is what I almost did.

Paul Ryan's just a really, deeply evil little creature. But he's not little; he's actually quite tall, I'm sorry to see. I'm always sorry when really bad guys are tall.

Marrying the right girl is even more imperative today than it was when I was 23 years old because it's so much harder to get on as an imaginative writer like me now. You need to have somebody who believes in what you're doing and who never is skeptical about what you're doing. My wife thought it was a great thing for me to be a writer because in practical terms it freed her to do what she wanted to do, which was work.

Tweet, tweet, you're alive, you ignorant asshole.

She was an artist. She held opposites in her mind.