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.

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.

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.

I am a great procrastinator. When the writing is going really well, the laundry piles up.

If you want to know what a person is truly made of, don't rush to define them until you meet them and see the principles they live by.

The transfer of power is always a test of the constitutional system, a test of its strength.

Love is never finished expressing itself, and it expresses itself better the more poetically it is dreamed.

A new breeze is blowing--and a nation refreshed by freedom stands ready to push on: there is new ground to be broken, and new action to be taken.

Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.

In this time of challenge, I am asking the prime minister to address Congress on the grave threats radical Islam and Iran pose to our security and way of life.

Well, for one thing, in the tradition of Zen that I've practiced, there is no prayerful worship and there is no affirmation of a deity.

We're trapped in linguistic constructs... all that is is metaphor.

Any team sport, there are certain team targets and those targets should always be in the forefront.

I have heard of some kind of men that put quarrels purposely on others, to taste their valor.