When you've finished reading every last thing by a famous writer, literary convention holds that you move on to his or her letters, the DVD extras peddled by publishers.

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.

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.

I am 15 and you are 51, I know you are the best, to be loved by, everyone.

Love is the most integral function of our lives. That is why LOVE is only one letter away from LIVE.

The writer's silent mind is a period of intermission before orchestrating a symphony of words.

Chaos is the penance for leisure.

The lovely flowers embarrass me. They make me regret I am not a bee.

In the measure to which a man cuts off and humbles his own will, he proceeds toward success. But insofar as he stubbornly guards his own will, so much does he brings harm to himself.

Revolution is like the daughters of Pelias: it cuts humanity to pieces in order to rejuvenate it.

The fingers and toes and beating hearts that we can see on an unborn child's ultrasound come with something that we cannot see: a soul

It is not our criminal actions that require courage to confess, but those which are ridiculous and foolish.

People are always arguing: New York or L.A.? They're both great places, you know.