Americans don't have saner gun laws because most Americans, including those citizens who puzzle over better angels, don't want saner gun laws.

Finally I do like best of all stories whose necessity is in the implied recognition that someplace out there there exists an urgency-a chaos-, an insanity, a misrule of some dire sort which can end life as we know it but for the fact that this very story is written, this order found, this style determined, the worst averted, and we are beneficiaries of that order by being readers

Our ex-wifes always harbour secrets about us that make them irresistable. Until, of course, we remember who we are and what we did and why we are not married anymore.

I think once you love somebody, you love somebody; that's just how it is.

The pace of life feels morally dangerous to me.

You can't write ... on the strength of influence. You can only write a good story or a good novel by yourself.

I don't want to be taken to Bhutan and smell the flowers. I want to be told something I couldn't have been told any other way.