YouTube is full of pieces of trash. If you want to look on YouTube and find something that insults you, you can probably find it.

I grew up kissing books and bread.

I've always prided myself on my discipline as a writer. I do it like a job. I get up in the morning and go to my desk.

I grew up reading 'The Jungle Books' and loving them.

The desire for story is very, very deep in human beings. We are the only creature in the world that does this; we are the only creature that tells stories, and sometimes those are true stories and sometimes those are made up stories. Then there are the larger stories, the grand narratives that we live in, which are things like nation and family and clan and so on. Those stories are considered to be treated reverentially. They need to be part of the way in which we conduct the discourse of our lives and to prevent people from doing something very damaging to human nature.

I write books I'd enjoy reading, I'm the reader standing behind my shoulder.

History could claw upward as well as down. The powerful could be deafened by the cries of the poor.