I came to understand that a German nudist, in 1984, loved little more than to work on his or her tan.

I can be pretty dense about my own basic needs, when my focus is getting through the many small tasks of a day's work and a day's caretaking.

Since I came an adult - for more than 45 years - Marcus Aurelius has been my great idol.

During the bus boycott, I was tested by fire, and I came to understand that I was not a breakable crystal figurine.

Indeed, the hype around 'Watchmen' is its curse. If you want to enjoy the comic for what it is, ignore the attributions of literariness and the novelistic pretensions with which some critics have imbued it. This isn't high culture, and it doesn't pretend to be. It's good, juicy pulp fiction with a little nuclear apocalypse thrown in.

I think the best fiction is a form of psychological suspense, even though I don't really write in that idiom.