Even the crudest, most derivative novel is an expression of the author's hopes and fears and ideas about good and evil.

All writing is an act of self-exploration. Even a grocery list says something about you; how much more does a novel say?

Im like the painter with his nose to the canvas, fussing over details. Gazing from a distance, the reader sees the big picture.

In politics, reality and appearance are of equal importance. You cannot attend to one and neglect the other. A man must determine both what he is, and what others believe him to be.

Writing a first novel takes so much effort, with such little promise of result or reward, that it must necessarily be a labour of love bordering on madness.

I can't say I had an ideal father, and I'm not a father myself.

There was no arguing with a man's faith in the legends of his childhood.

There was a young man who said though, it seems that I know that I know, but what I would like to see is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know.

Her mind is an unquiet one, words and thoughts and impulses constantly crashing into each other.

Every technology will alienate you from some part of your life. That is its job. Your job is to notice. First notice the difference. And then, every time, choose.

When you take your place as the authority figure in your home, your child will feel more safe in the real world, not the screen world.

If by my life or death I can protect you, I will.

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.

I watched my brother and my father. The truth was very different from what we learned in school. The truth was the line between the living and the dead could be, it seemed, murky and blurred.

The ability of the market to serve society gas been and is continually being undermined by the attacks levelled by its ideological opponents.

This nation has gotten away from the principles of the founding fathers under the failed leadership of Barack Obama. This country could use a president like Benjamin Franklin again.