First I laughed my way through Elinor Lipman's book of political tweets. Then I put my ear to the ground and listened to Molly Ivins guffawing from the grave. Lipman is a piquant poetic rock star!

But I think this: that whatever prices I've paid, whatever sorrows I shoulder, well, I have blessings, too. Not just my family now, but the others-the ones who have died...They're with me still. They're here...

Love comes in far more shapes and sizes than what the family-values crowd condones, of course.

My Italian-American heritage, of which I'm very proud and with which I identify strongly, surfaces in several of my novels.

I try to stick with what moves me or teaches me about myself, same thing I hope the novels do for others.

I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family's, and my country's past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things. This much, at least, I've figured out. I know this much is true.

I think I write fiction for the opportunity to get beyond the limits of my own life.