He didn’t like having to start the fire again, that was the source of this small sadness. You get tired of these endless beginnings.

[G]ive him this much: death didn't just walk up and inhale him. He wasn't exactly whisked away. He left claw marks on his life.

You cannot be a positive influence to the “sinners at the table" if you refuse to dine with them.

Beware of the wronged Genius

A good portion of speaking will consist in knowing how to lie.

I fired Mike Flynn because of what he said to Mike Pence, very simple. Mike was doing his job, calling countries and his counterparts, so it certainly would have been ok with me if he did it.

In France, that let down the barriers more than a hundred years ago, the feeling of antipathy is still strong enough to sustain an anti-Jewish political party

Could have recovered greenness?

I use a lot of humor in my writing. But it's completely black humor.

Immortality is a by-product of good work.

Politics isn't what defines a person, and it shouldn't define a relationship. I made the mistake of letting that intrude on my relationships.

I love grand scale. One of the things that everybody mentions is that my novels are beautiful objects in the sense that the elements of the actual book are being extruded and re-contextualized.