I love to read the way people love to watch television.

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.

Part of the puzzle, surely, lies in the disconnect between official rhetoric and lived realities. Americans are constantly extolling “traditions”; litanies to family values are at the center of every politician’s discourse. And yet the culture of America is extremely corrosive of family life, indeed of all traditions except those redefined as “identities” that fit in the larger patterns of distinctiveness, cooperation, and openness to innovation.

The truth of history crowds out the truth of fiction - as if one were obliged to choose between them.

Authoritarian political ideologies have a vested interest in promoting fear, a sense of the imminence of takeover by aliens and real diseases are useful material.

Wherever people feel safe — they will be indifferent.

Gide and I have attained such perfect intellectual communion that I experience the appropriate labor pains for every thought he gives birth to!