The problem of empathy is pretty universal, and pretty much breaks down across America. People can't feel beyond their drawn borders. And skin color and culture have a lot to do with that.

For whatever reason, people know that car crashes can happen but they don't live with that fear every day when they're driving, or they're able to overcome it.

I also think that there's something about the graphic, political nature of such attacks, mixed with the fact that it all seems completely random to the victims.

The West, in the form of American capitalism, is seen as having won, but people are beginning to offer alternatives again, sometimes in retrograde ways like radical Islam.

The feeling I got from my research is that the victims of bombings end up becoming as alienated from the government as the terrorists who cause the attacks.

Of course I had a piece of luck I couldn't have imagine for myself in a million years: I got an agent. That sped up the process. I'd say it's a good idea, getting an agent.

How do you prevent attacks from becoming the very fabric of lived life in a city? Of course it's very easy to say you should be fearless and go about your daily life.

It's very good for us to say, as liberals, that we should be moved by everything, but the fact is that there's just so much competing for our attention.

I'm more interested than Philip Roth in understanding women, even if I do it imperfectly. But that book, Portnoy's Complaint, is literary punk in this way that is rare.

People are rushed and inspired by the success of Indian writers, and are falling over themselves to write novels. Every Indian is writing a novel right now. No one wants to revise.

Most of the people in the audience were white and old. They had the gaunt look of people who have seen all the important movies and can now only look forward to reruns.

Life is made up of time

The more you engage and connect, the more engagement and connections you will have.

A boy admiring a pretty girl. A rare thing to be certain. But love-true love-is something else.

I saw a gray-haired man a figure of hale age, sitting at a desk and writing.

People do always try to smoke pot with me. But I think some of those people are cops.

Do no harm. Do good. Stay in love with God.

Leave this world a little better than you found it.

No mans error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.

Better to have an enemy who slaps you in the face than a friend who stabs you in the back.