I actually interviewed other people about myself, and that alerted me to the fact that I had to really investigate my memories.
I'm a liberal, but I think there's so much that the private sector can do and does do.
During the day, if I don't have any other commitments, I'm usually at my desk writing, revising, or researching anywhere from four to six hours.
Our house was awash in books, and my mother doled out her favorites like they were special treats - which they were.
The only thing that I was equipped for with my very mediocre college Arts degree was to get a job in teaching.
I buy a lot of books I've found via the Internet, whose existences I'd otherwise never have known about.
I really hate the term 'historical novel' - it reminds me of bodice-rippers. But I'm hooked on research, and I really, really enjoy it.
Anything designed to be inoffensive isn't worth your time -- life itself is pretty offensive, ending as it does with death.
What I said about John was that he liberated me from my anxieties about writing in a correct, acceptable way.
I was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, for a while, about which the less said the better, and then I was in the Mediterranean, about which the more said the better.
I was immediately smitten with an attraction to this culture, not in the sense of high culture but of the basic way people behaved towards one another.
Some of football's gaudiest displays of manliness are purely aesthetic. It's not what players do, it's how they look doing it.
Now, whenever I need to go online, I confine myself to a tight circle: Gmail, MLB.com, NYTimes.com, Slate and maybe Facebook.
Everything wrong I've ever done has always seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
Getting 10,000 listeners for a free podcast novel is a lot easier than selling 10,000 hardcover novels at $25 a pop.
When I've pictured what Heaven would be like, I've always imagined myself free to explore the outer reaches of space.
Even some of the most jaded D.C. types are still impressed when the leader of the free world enters the room.
let yourself cry, OK? One of the worst feelings in the world is being unable to cry and eventually it…starts to make things darker.
Pain is pain...Just because one person's problem is less traumatic than another's doesn't mean they're required to hurt less.
I like dressing up for dates and dissecting a dinner conversation with a new guy to determine if he might be The One.
I admire the linear and decisive way a certain kind of man thinks, to my curlicue boundless overthinking.
