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.

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.

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.

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.

The world can do nothing to a Christian who has no fear of man.

It should be remembered that a decline of 50% fully offsets a preceding advance of 100%.

The two sides of Bernie - that's a quiet weapon that I have.

Hanging out with politicians and corporations is very unhip work. But I think that the U2 audience have turned out to be incredibly subtle in their understanding.

Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic.

Uncertain ways unsafest are, and doubt a greater mischief than despair.

Such is our pride, our folly, or our fate, That few, but such as cannot write, translate.

It is strange the way the ignorant and inexperienced so often and so undeservedly succeed when the informed and the experienced fail.

It takes a lot of guts to get up on top of a bar and dance.

I want to be young for the longest time possible.