When writers stop believing in their own stories, readers tend to sense it.

What I like about non-fiction is that it covers such a huge territory. The best non-fiction is also creative

You can write about anything, and if you write well enough, even the reader with no intrinsic interest in the subject will become involved.

Curing yourself of obsessive compulsive disorder by going to a strip club is pretty strange.

I am grateful to Stacy Schiff first of all because she can write a sentence-because she offers us her scholarship with wit, clarity, and grace. Once again, she has done what only the best writers can do: she has made the world new, again.

I do believe in God. I think God has given so much power to people, and intelligence, and said, 'Well, you are on your own. Maybe I'm tired, I need a nap. You are mature. Why don't you look after yourselves?' And I think He's been sleeping too much.

Many people find it easy to imagine unseen webs of malevolent conspiracy in the world, and they are not always wrong. But there is also an innocence that conspires to hold humanity together, and it is made of people who can never fully know the good that they have done.