My professional and human obsession is the nature of language, and my best relationships are with other writers. In many ways, I know George Eliot better than I know my husband.

I sort of mind living in a time when most of the literature is terribly personal. I suppose it's because I grew up on a love of history, philosophy, science and religion, but not to think too much about yourself.

You learn different things through fiction. Historians are always making a plot about how certain things came to happen. Whereas a novelist looks at tiny little things and builds up a sort of map, like a painting, so that you see the shapes of things.

I like feeling my way into different minds and experiences. It comes naturally and always has.

For example, colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Every four minutes someone is diagnosed, and every nine minutes someone dies.

The nature of Ebola is that health-care workers are predominantly affected because of the way that it is spread.

But if you - if what - the reports are true, what they're saying is, is that as a consequence of us getting 30 million additional people health care, at the margins that's going to increase our costs, we knew that.

Of course, no one doubts McCain's personal tenacity, from braving torture to overcoming cancer. Yet plenty of nonpartisan observers doubt his credibility.