If I had to summarize, most broadly, my concerns as a writer, I'd say the question 'How then must we live?' is at the heart of it, for me.

Above all, in my anger, I was sad. Isn't that always the way, that at the heart of the fire is a frozen kernel of sorrow that the fire is trying -- valiantly, fruitlessly -- to eradicate.

I've discovered over the years that the simplest explanation is almost always the right one; and that hunger of one kind or another - desire, by another name - is the source of almost every sorrow.

That's so her. You know, torn between Big Ideas and a party. She's always been that way.

To my mind, Guernica is the most important online intellectual and literary journal in America today.

Geniuses have the shortest biographies.

It doesn't ever occur to you, as you fashion your mask so carefully, that it will grow into your skin and graft itself, come to seem irremovable.

We read to find life, in all its possibilities.

I was funny -- ha-ha, not peculiar. It was a modest currency, like pennies: pedestrian, somewhat laborious, but a currency nonetheless. I was funny, in public, most often at my own expense.

I wanted to write a voice that for me, as a reader, had been missing from the chorus: the voice of an angry woman.

Yes, writing is essential to me. It's my way of living in the world.

You're the best in me!

Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist since at least half of the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

Weak people talk and do not act, strong people act and keep quiet.

Faith is a mental attitude that is so convinced of its own idea - which so completely accepts it - that any contradiction is unthinkable and impossible.

The 2012 London Olympic Games fostered a generation of hope. I witnessed women participating for the very first time, representing every nation.

I grew up in front of a TV.

I do not want players who do not have a keen desire to win and do not play hard and aggressively to accomplish that objective.

To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair inevitable.

Get your friends together, go to your local bookstore and have a book-buying party.

A nice pop star would do you nice on one of those deserted islands.