No one had ever given me any idea on how to handle it when the right one came along, but you weren't the right one for him.

Her mother had told her that when she was a girl. Whenever you’re in trouble, just remember you’re your own best friend.

One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.

People are zealous for a cause when they are not quite positive that it is true.

We demand too much of life, too little of ourselves.

Power is the great enemy of freedom

The most effective weapon against crime is cooperation... The efforts of all law enforcement agencies with the support and understanding of the American people.

There are some books in which every poem is a facet of the same thing. So the book is like a piece of music. And there are books of poems that I love so much that I carry them around with me.

Even before 9/11 I was gripped by a sense of dread: our lack of criticism about what we were doing in the Middle East - the slagging off of a whole religious tradition.

Popularity can be a real headache.