I suppose we make kids the repository of our highest ideals because children are powerless. In that way we can have ideals and ignore them at the same time.

Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers.

I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference.

Most people do not consider dawn to be an attractive experience - unless they are still up.

Maybe this year, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives not looking for flaws, but looking for potential.

The central struggle of parenthood is to let our hopes for our children outweigh our fears.

I regard this novel as a work without redeeming social value, unless it can be recycled as a cardboard box.

What he labels sexual, she labels harassment.

Today, much of journalism and politics are in a kind of collusion to oversimplify and personalize issues. No room for ambivalence. Plenty of room for the personal attack.

Ultimately, time is all you have and the idea isn't to save it, but to savour it.

Our 'mistakes' become our crucial parts, sometimes our best parts, of the lives we have made.

People say: idle curiosity. The one thing that curiosity cannot be is idle.

There's no shame in being romantic at all. I think people want to feel that sense of romance, which is rarely even attempted anymore.

You have to change things in order to get to where you want to go. And things might get worse. But if you're not getting where you want to be, already, in a sense, it's as bad as it can get.

I love to write, so it rarely seems like work - even when it gets arduous.

I'm one of the blind alleys off the main road of procreation.

Marriage isn't a tram. It doesn't have to get anywhere.

The greatest adventure is what lies ahead

Everybody works in a different way, and I've worked with actors that have no training whatsoever who are phenomenal.

Sentence writers are not copyists; they are selectors.

All pity choked with custom of fell deeds.