I tend to start with a kernel, a vague concept, and just begin to write things down - notes about a character, lines of dialogue, descriptive passages about a place. One idea fires another. I do that for about a year. By then there's a story, and I'l...
I've become President of the Author's Guild, and, in part because they thought I had to know what I was talking about and also as a sort of coronation present, they got me an iPad. And I have to tell you, I'm crazy about it. It's got some bugs, but i...
The United Nations is the preeminent institution of multilateralism. It provides a forum where sovereign states can come together to share burdens, address common problems, and seize common opportunities. The U.N. helps establish the norms that many ...
When I grew up in India, telephones were a rarity. In fact, they were so rare that elected members of Parliament had the right to allocate 15 telephone lines as a favor to those they deemed worthy. If you were lucky enough to be a wealthy businessman...
According to the IRS, the wealthiest 400 Americans, who earned an average of roughly $270 million in 2008, paid an average tax rate of just 18.2 percent that year. That's about the same rate paid by a single truck driver in Rhode Island. It's not rig...
Although this crisis in some ways started in the United States, it is a global crisis. We bear a substantial share of the responsibility for what has happened, but factors that made the crisis so acute and so difficult to contain lie in a broader set...
It's not about what the speaker wants. It's not about necessarily what I want. There's two other principles involved here. It's what the constituents in my district want, and they didn't want to raise the debt ceiling unless there were significant st...
We are seeing, we have seen in the last figures a significant drop in the number of net migrants coming into the United Kingdom. So we are cutting out abuse, we've restricted the number of economic - non-EU economic migrants. We're cutting out abuse ...
It is quite widely known that I like shoes. This is not something that defines me as either a woman or a politician, but it has come to define me in the eyes of the newspapers. I wore a pair of leopard-print kitten heels to a Conservative Party Confe...
I went through all my electric bills, the water bills, the phone bills, elevator contracts, and I found enough wasteful spending without reducing any programs anywhere, without reducing any services, I found enough wasteful spending to pay my entire ...
I've had jobs that allow me the flexibility to achieve work-life balance, to be there when one of the kids sinks a jump shot or for the parent-teacher meetings. I can move tasks around. If I don't get something done at the office at 4:30 in the after...
Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.
Although not a very old man, I have yet lived a great deal in my life, and I have known sorrow too bitter and joy too keen to allow me to become either cast down or elated for more than a very brief period over any success or defeat.
Certainly I feel like I'm the tip of the arrow at times because certainly the national media wants to talk about the fact that I'm a black Republican and some people think of that as zany that a black person would be a conservative but to me what is ...
I think the question is who am I? That's what we all should be asking ourselves. Who am I? Well, if I am first a Christian conservative then that dictates my response to all questions so my response first as a Christian conservative is to vote consis...
Federal assistance helps millions of Americans escape poverty every year by providing the stability needed to take advantage of new opportunities. In fact, it is our safety net that allows full participation in the economy. More Americans purchasing ...
People aren't necessarily as concerned with how you vote as long as they feel they have a voice. If you can cross that basic threshold - that is, when a voter knows you're willing to listen to them and that you care about their lives - then that's mo...
I have said that I am in favor of personhood as a concept. I am not taking a position on any of the state amendments, and I have said over and over again - and it has been reported over and over again - that I am not in favor of banning any common fo...
When you're borrowing 40 cents of every dollar that you spend, that can't continue much longer. I think everybody really does understand that, and it's going to require all of us - those who are the most fortunate among us - but it's really going to ...
We not only heard it before 20 years ago, before George Bush in 2001 passed his tax relief, before in 2003 the tax relief were past, we were told they were dead. Before we provided prescription drugs for Medicare, we were told it wasn't going to happ...
Abraham Lincoln did not shoot John Wilkes Booth. Titanic did not sink a North Atlantic iceberg. And Fox News is neither fair nor balanced. These are simple historical facts intelligible to all adults, most children, and some of your more discerning d...
