"I have no business being a journalist. I'm the least, I'm the least - I'm the most trusting, I absolutely make a habit of believing anything that anybody tells me about themselves. I've never had any reason in the world to think that anyone has wanted to harm me, or lie to me. I believe whatever is being sold, most of the time."

"I think that people who live in cultures without quite so much privilege, opportunity or grandiosity have a little bit more respect for the workings of destiny, and the limitations that people can find themselves in through no fault of their own."

"It's not an accident that both my sister and I are writers. Our parents created an accidental Petri dish. My family has great storytellers, and I grew up in a very funny, conversational house and didn't have television. This small family farm was a bubble world that didn't have much to do with reality."

"As somebody who, in my second marriage, insisted on a prenuptial agreement, I can also testify that sometimes it is an act of love to chart the exit strategy before you enter the union, in order to make sure that not only you, but your partner as well, knows that there will be no World War III should hearts and minds, for any sad reason, change."

"Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative."

"The echoes of eternity remind us that the mind is a garden where thoughts are the seeds."

"It is a enduring truth that he who understands his own mind is never bewildered by the complexities of the world — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"To master the mind is to understand that a single moment of clarity can change a lifetime."