How do you prevent attacks from becoming the very fabric of lived life in a city? Of course it's very easy to say you should be fearless and go about your daily life.

For whatever reason, people know that car crashes can happen but they don't live with that fear every day when they're driving, or they're able to overcome it.

I also think that there's something about the graphic, political nature of such attacks, mixed with the fact that it all seems completely random to the victims.

The West, in the form of American capitalism, is seen as having won, but people are beginning to offer alternatives again, sometimes in retrograde ways like radical Islam.

The feeling I got from my research is that the victims of bombings end up becoming as alienated from the government as the terrorists who cause the attacks.

Of course I had a piece of luck I couldn't have imagine for myself in a million years: I got an agent. That sped up the process. I'd say it's a good idea, getting an agent.

It's very good for us to say, as liberals, that we should be moved by everything, but the fact is that there's just so much competing for our attention.

The problem of empathy is pretty universal, and pretty much breaks down across America. People can't feel beyond their drawn borders. And skin color and culture have a lot to do with that.

I'm more interested than Philip Roth in understanding women, even if I do it imperfectly. But that book, Portnoy's Complaint, is literary punk in this way that is rare.

People are rushed and inspired by the success of Indian writers, and are falling over themselves to write novels. Every Indian is writing a novel right now. No one wants to revise.

Most of the people in the audience were white and old. They had the gaunt look of people who have seen all the important movies and can now only look forward to reruns.

For wisdom: read your Bible repeatedly and apply its truths often.

Like a sheep invited to a banquet in his honor thrown by wolves.

It is the camp law: people going to their death must be deceived to the very end.

The good news is that we are Buddha. The bad news is that all beings are Buddha. The sickness of being human is the sickness of wanting to be unique.

I was the punk outsider who nobody messed with. I was fearless. At 16, I graduated and moved out.

Without self belief nothing can be accomplished. With it, nothing is impossible.

Fashion is meant to be fun.

I can't seem to keep my heart from leaking out of the cracks, like sand clutched in a fist.

You must always be yourself, and do things at your own pace. Someday, you'll catch up.

Violence begets violence, and then you get leaders who are violent men. And you don't want that.