I don't separate my books into historical novels and the rest. To me, they're all made-up worlds, and both kinds are borne out of curiosity, some investigation into the past.

The failure of the U.S.'s foreign adventures often seems to have its roots in the U.S.'s total ignorance of things on the ground, of the countries that they fiddle with.

The great thing about using the past is that it gives you the most colossal freedom to invent. The research is necessary, of course, but no one writes a novel to dramatically illustrate what everybody already knows.

I used to say when I was younger, 'I'm exhausted; writers can only write for four hours a day and that's done.' Now I find, as I'm getting older and I'm more aware of time, I can actually write all day.

There's a lot of money coming in, and so a lot of good players are going to each team, so every game is a fight, but on the other hand, it's good to get a good, competitive league.

San Francisco is an interesting place. It's always been such a nice culturally diverse environment, which it still is, but there's a lot of money there now and a lot of dot com's so it's a little different than it used to be.

As with the government failures that made 9/11 possible, neglecting to prevent the crash of '08 was a sin of omission - less the result of deregulation per se than of disbelief in financial regulation as a legitimate mechanism.

Let's take care of mothers and infants first, and then let's see what's left over for everybody over 50. I'm over 50. If I get sick, I would rather have money spent on children before it's spent on me.