Who on earth is going to use 'utilize' in a text message, a whopping seven characters including the always-hard-to-type 'z,' when you can say the exact same thing in three characters? I can't think of a sentence in which 'use' can't replace 'utilize.'

I think the responsibility of running a huge business, which happens if you become a successful designer, probably makes you more careful.

Writers like to write, and writing in different forms - short, long, bite-sized, done on the fly, done with painstaking attention - all interest me.

Election Day outside of big cities is different. For one thing, there are so few people in my town that each individual vote really does matter, and several local races have been decided by as many votes as you can count on one hand.

I'm much more willing to buy a novel electronically by someone I don't know. Because if halfway through I think, I don't really like this, I can just stop. I can't throw books out, even if I think they're crummy. I feel like I've got to give it to the library. I've got to loan it to somebody, or I keep it on my shelf. It's like a plant.

I rarely listen to commercial radio, and when I do, I'm shocked by how many ads there are, and how annoying they are, and how bad the radio station usually is.

The genius of a folk melody or story is not the feeling that it's original but quite the opposite - the feeling that it has existed all along.