My father was the proprietor of a music shop on Forty-third Street, where many of the finest performers and musicians of the day would come to shop. He knew the classical repertoire inside out.

We're always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it's a little raw and nervy.

People come out of the mid-west and go to the Ivy League. I kind of reversed the direction.

I've outlasted many marriages at Random House.

Obama is a great man who's just beginning to understand the realities. And I'm not just saying that because he reads my books. I would have voted for him anyway.

One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in the position of writing to find out what I was writing. I did that with 'World's Fair,' as with all of them. The inventions of the book come as discoveries.