Say you're an American novelist, published by the largest publishing house in the world. Their goal is to make as much money from you as possible, to have as many people read your book in as many formats as possible. How can you hope to speak intimately to the numbers of people that represent the book sales required?

I've never been able to shake the idea of family, which is to say I've never been able to shake my family. Being membered - being one limb of an immense grosser body - that's always been a fact to me.

All of business and all of politics is essentially fiction to those who live them. I have more experience with fiction than most senators because I do it all day, so their world didn't seem that foreign to me.

Religion,' I should note, has a disputed etymology in Latin: some say it's from 'relegere,' meaning 'to reread', while others say it's from religare, meaning 'to connect' or 'link.' Literature is life's fastener.