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I think public intellectuals have a responsibility - to be self-critical on the one hand, to do serious, nuanced work rigorously executed; but to also be able to get off those perches and out of those ivory towers and speak to the real people who make decisions; to speak truth to power and the powerless with lucidity and eloquence.

The literary culture, if you examine it, the high literary culture is that which preserves the government and you know it's really the talk for those who have.

An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery.

Public opinion shapes our destinies and guides the progress of human affairs.

The leader must aim high, see big, judge widely, thus setting himself apart form the ordinary people who debate in narrow confines.

What I do know is that writing is the thing I am best at, and I don't have the stomach, the ability, the strength or the courage to enter the political arena. And I think writing can be a political act, if only to let those people accountable know they are being watched. Literature can be a conscience.

Literature has to serve as a moral control of politics.

I do think that part of literature's job is to comment on and participate in the social issues of the time.

It's incumbent on good public servants to maintain their voices and originality of thinking.

I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.