My books are elegiac in the sense that they're odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination.

...aware, as always, that the truth isn't much of substitute for a good answer.

... Baggott enjoys living on the knife edge between hilarity and heartbreak and that makes her a writer after my own heart.

When authors who write literary fiction begin to write screenplays, everybody assumes that's the end. Here's another who's never going to write well again.

The world is divided between kids who grow up wanting to be their parents and those like us, who grow up wanting to be anything but. Neither group ever succeeds.

At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.

You can't possibly judge your ability to control something until you've experienced the extremes of its capabilities. Do you understand?