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.

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.

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.

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 some young people, their first experience ever hearing punk rock music was playing the Green Bay Packers on 'Madden'.

Value people because of who they were deep down, not because of their names or their parents’ clout.

The gretteste clerkes been noght wisest men.

Life is not a song, sweetling. Someday you may learn that, to your sorrow.

The great trouble with you Americans is that you are still under the influence of that second-rate - shall I say third-rate? - mind, Karl Marx.

A tiny little wooden man [was] slowly ascending the steps to a real set of gallows, both perched on a box that read: Reusable Hangman — Spell It Or He’ll Swing!

It gets like this in Liverpool when you're on the ferry and the sun reflects off the Mersey.

If you don't pick your audience, you're lost because you're not really talking to anybody.

I had a very happy childhood, which is unsuitable if you're going to be an Irish writer.

You do design because you feel it inside; you have a moral issue to spread quality in our environment.