I always think the novelist should go to the culture's dark places and poke around. Pose a lot of hard questions.

Your memories from your early childhood seem to have such purchase on your emotions. They are so concrete.

Occupy Wall Street means making Wall Street and the corporate power elite understand that the people affected by the binge of unregulated greed are not going away, and they are not going to give up.

All roads lead to Wall Street, but we feel the effects of Wall Street on every street corner. Certainly in Syracuse, N.Y., where I live.

The issue isn't, Am I good enough? No. The issue is, Do I not have any other choice? Will and desire don't matter. Ability doesn't matter. Need is the only thing that matters.

The novel is about, for me, sustained and organized looking. I do think that people have a hunger for a sustained engagement, that concentration that the book can offer.

I am always trying to do something new and different. The first step is curiosity, questions. You pay attention to what fascinates you. If you can't shake it, there is something there.

In order to be a living, breathing thing, a novel has to be failed in some kind of way. Or at least that's how I keep writing them.

I have to say that movies have as much impact on me as music. And that I learned as much about narrative from movies as I did from reading novels, how to arrange stories, how to juxtapose things.

A good novel should be deeply unsettling - its satisfactions should come from its authenticity and its formal coherence. We must feel something crucial is at stake.

Yes, I did try acting when I was in high school and I was terrible at it. So I definitely have had the experience of being bad at artistic endeavor.

Believing in Jesus prevent you from failing and missing the true end and scope of life, which is God

A virtuous wife is an indispensable asset in the hand of her husband . In contrary, a nagging wife is a liability to her husband . There is nothing she cannot destroy.

Hope is a great assurance.

Brand-new truths are probably not Truths.

Technological man can't believe in anything that can't be measured, taped, or put into a computer.

Fashion is not frivolous. I am a businesswoman, a very serious person.

I'm bad at baking. I'm bad at letting go of things. I'm probably bad at reading.

Pakistan is a nation, which, if it falls apart, if it becomes a failed state, there are nuclear weapons there and you've got terrorists there who could grab their hands onto those nuclear weapons.

Prepare far enough in advance, and just about anything is possible.

The more people who believe something, the more apt it is to be wrong. The person who's right often has to stand alone.