The Infinities' is a shortish book but densely loaded with Nabokovian slyness, gorgeous imagery, and disturbing insights into what it means to be mortal.

For novelists, sharply drawn moral conflicts are often useful, and even human and personal disasters can be seen as material.

DeLillo has said that he no longer feels a compulsion to write long, compendious books. In his later years, Saul Bellow said something similar. DeLillo, of course, has written very long in the past, notably with the 850-page Underworld (1997), and his story has been America.

If I had been brought up in America, I think I would still have had the same sort of job as a writer.

Federal judges are just very reluctant to stick the government with responsibility.

While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing - good for our political culture.

In 1988, my mother led a nationwide election campaign, wrote a bestselling book, had her first child, and became the youngest and first female prime minister of the Muslim world. All in one year! For her detractors, this wasn't good enough. She was unacceptable because she was a woman.

Politics, for me, is not a competition to see who's got the bigger ego. It's working together for the good of the people.