I had a very difficult relationship with my father, which ended up okay, but there were many difficult years.

In today's US, it's possible for almost anyone - women, gays, African-Americans, Jews - to run for, and be elected to, high office.

I seem to have fallen for women with missing parents. Goodness knows what it signifies.

The lessons one learns at school are not always the ones the school thinks it's teaching.

The gamble of literature is that I make the best work I can; the most truthful, the most representative of how I see things. I try and do that and then I put it out there and say to you, "What do you think?" I hope that you think well of it, obviously.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

The thing that I think was very brave of my younger self was that he decided he would be an idiot. Just persevere. That feels brave to me: deciding that I'm going to damn well be this person that I've set my heart on being.