You can lose a reader in a blink of an eye. If a person is an engineer or chemist or an anthropologist or whatever, you spoil the whole book for that person if there's obviously ignorance here. What's wrong with so much science fiction is that the science is so lousy that it isn't worth paying attention to.

Among the reasons that you go into journalism, I suppose, are some rather idealistic, even foolish reasons. In my case one of the reasons was I wanted to explain how things really work, how political power really works.

I deliberately made an effort not to become an expert on the ballet.

I trained myself to be organized.

The ballet embodies the notes of music. And sometimes you almost feel like you can see the notes dance up there on the stage.

Nobody believes this, but I write very fast.

To my mind, the prose in a non-fiction work that's going to endure has to be of the same quality as the prose in a work of fiction that endures.