Can't nothing heal without pain, you know.

Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.

Being able to laugh got me through.

The Nobel Prize is the best thing that can happen to a writer in terms of how it affects your contracts, the publishers, and the seriousness with which your work is taken. On the other hand, it does interfere with your private life, or it can if you let it, and it has zero effect on the writing. It doesn't help you write better and if you let it, it will intimidate you about future projects.

There is really nothing more to say - except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.

[Obama is ] creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom . . . [He is] the man for this time.

They had stared at her with great uncomprehending eyes. Eyes that questioned nothing and asked everything. Unblinking and unabashed, they stared up at her. The end of the world lay in their eyes, and the beginning, and all the waste in bewteen.