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I don't like things I work on to have political didacticism - there are questions, but not messages.

I don't want to force my politics on my readers.

The main thing is to make history, not to write it.

Political biography is in the doldrums. No one wants to read 800 pages or so of cradle-to-grave dead politics, especially if it's familiar stuff and has all been written about before.

I would not want to write something about something I do not think about.

I don't want to constantly be writing about terrorism and strife.

I think what I would really most like to write about is palm trees and bougainvillea and hummingbirds. I would like to go into the desert and write about salamanders and the Grand Canyon, but history keeps rupturing my experience because politics are everywhere.

I don't make that hard and fast distinction between political and nonpolitical writing. I write about what bothers me.

I am not a political writer. I agree with Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell, who are social writers. I can't write in that fashion. I am not good enough for that. What I am interested in is family dramas and why we are doing bad things to each other and what our motives are.