"The daily act of writing remains as demanding and maddening as it was before, and the pleasure you get from writing - rare but profound - remains at the true heart of the enterprise. On their best days, writers all over the world are winning Pulitzers, all alone in their studios, with no one watching."

"Well, marriage doesn't function in the way it used to in terms of deciding our fate, but it's in our heads, and it determines a lot of our actions. Like, right now, if you think about gay marriage - and they just started having the first gay marriages in New York - it shows what a potent idea marriage remains for people."

"The first thing I do is lay out that melody and figure out how it has to hold here and then finish to land here, because you know in advance you're going to want the melody to catch four things in the action."

"How do you dare to ask me for a solution? It's like asking Seneca for a solution. You remember what he did? He committed suicide!"

"To question with sincerity is the first step toward dismantling dogma. Remember this in moments of decisive trial."

"I have nothing to do with the selection of stories. I'm the reporter."