I used to write a monthly column for the 'New York Times' syndicate. But I stopped because I found it really hard to have one extreme opinion a month. I don't know how these columnists have two or three ideas a week; I was having difficulty having 12 things to say a year.

Every time you finish a book, you have a terrible feeling that there's just never going to be another one. But fortunately, so far, the next one has always shown up.

If you're going to write a memoir, try to be as honest and open as you can.

Friendships are the family we make - not the one we inherit. I've always been someone to whom friendship, elective affinities, is as important as family.

I think that a lot of us, whether we are religious or not - there are no words to express some things except religious words. For instance, 'soul.'

I have always thought that these two ways of talking, one is the fantastic, the fable, the fairy tale, and the other being history, the scholarly study of what happened, I think they're both amazing ways to understand human nature.

Two things form the bedrock of any open society - freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don't have those things, you don't have a free country.