"I came to America at the age of 17 as an exchange student, and a year later, I was a student at Dartmouth. I would say that the rather weak foundation of my Christianity was effectively battered at Dartmouth. I've had mostly a secular career. But I became intellectually interested in Christianity again in my mid-30s."

"If Obama came by his liberalism in the faculty lounge, then sure, he can see it hasn't worked, and he can modify it. But if Obama got his formative ideas when he was very young, and if they are the result of his traumatic relationship with his father, then they are built into his psyche."

"Christianity teaches that this life is not the only life, and there is a final judgment in which all earthly accounts are settled."

"Other countries have been founded by 'accidents of force.' America is a creation of thought."

"I started playing guitar at, like, 12 or 13 and just rock bands mostly. I had a punk rock band and hard core bands and all that."

"Mediocre men work at their best men seeking excellence strive to do better."

"I think that if the novel's task is to describe where we find ourselves and how we live now, the novelist must take a good, hard look at the most central facts of contemporary life - technology and science."

"The distance between ambition and reality is bridged solely by consistent effort. For where clarity resides, peace inevitably follows — an essential principle for the reflective life."