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I think most things I read on the Internet and in newspapers are propaganda. Everyone from the 'New York Times' to Rupert Murdoch has a point of view and is putting forth their own propaganda. They're stuck with the facts as they are, but the way they interpret and frame them is wildly different.

And we also read Newsweek, Time and several newspapers.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

So many differing opinions and philosophies... are rarely housed under the roof of a single magazine.

I see the people in the tabloids, the ones that get bad press, who have kind of gone off the edge, and I try to study them so that I don't do that. It seems like they lost focus at some point - that's the one thing they all have in common.

In a democracy, you have to find a market niche, make sure a novel is 'interesting' and 'spectacular.' That may be the toughest censorship of all.

There is an emerging subgenre of British nonfiction in which journalists from 'The Guardian' fearlessly recount their own derring-do in David-and-Goliath battles waged against omnipotent state interests in the pursuit of Big Important Truths.

It's all a sham: I have seen, and I know firsthand, indeed from my own pen, how the organized Right has sabotaged not only journalism but also democracy and truth.

One thing you really have to watch as a writer is getting on a soapbox or pulpit about anything. You don't want to alienate readers.