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I'd excluded New York from my writing, and then I came back and I fell in love with it all over again. The energy comes from an absence, that yearning for New York when you are not there.

Whenever I left New York, the Twin Towers welcomed me back in. It was a symbol of my city - the most unique city in the world, so when I moved to Virginia and later to Maryland, it meant even more.

When I retired and told my wife I wanted to go back to Bozeman and fight political corruption and get involved in politics, she decided to stay in Seattle.

I've spent the past month in Washington, D.C., and it is terrific to be back in America.

I ran away from St. Louis, and then I ran away from the United States, because of that terror of discrimination.

I thought, 'I'll come back to New York. I worked for the 'Aspen Times' when I lived in Aspen. I'll work for the 'New York Times' when I live in New York.' It didn't work out that way.

A woman is more than the sum of her parts. So I had an opportunity to present some work at the White House. I chose not just to talk about the sky, the planet, love or heartache. I wanted to actually be there, to place a mark on that moment.

My family moved - first to Washington, D.C., and then, in the spring of 1975, to Lebanon, where my father worked as a diplomat at the American embassy. My parents were enthusiastic about the move, so my older brother and I felt like we were off to some place kind of cool.