American Secretaries of State have typically been more buttoned up than bon vivant, but John Quincy Adams's diplomatic successes - bigger than anything Presidential or legislative that he achieved - still surprise a student of his personality.

Cell phones, alas, have pretty much ruined train travel, which I used to love. I could read or even sketch notes for what I was working on.

Ive always got a novel under way, but if I try to work on it every day, exclusively, I falter. So I always keep more than one thing going.

American Secretaries of State have typically been more buttoned up than bon vivant, but John Quincy Adams's diplomatic successes - bigger than anything Presidential or legislative that he achieved - still surprise a student of his personality.

I actually think that Bandbox, by far the silliest of my books, is the best constructed of them.

My prescription for writer's block is to face the fact that there is no such thing.... Writing well is difficult, but one can always write something. And then, with a lot of work, make it better. It's a question of having enough will and ambition, not of hoping to evade this mysterious hysteria people are always talking about.

I have a picture of the Pont Neuf on a wall in my apartment, but i know that Paris is really on the closet shelf, in the box next to the sleeping bag, with the rest of my diaries.