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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.

Writing is sometimes a balancing act between keeping things easily readable and being accurate.

One's politics are part of one even when one is writing. But if I want to say anything about the state of civil society, I will write an essay. The responsibilities you feel as a novelist are literary ones, I think, not civic ones. And I think politicians are interesting to write about.

The act of writing is a kind of catharsis, a liberation, but I never really concerned myself with that. I write because it interests me.

Writing is taking a risk, and it is actually fighting invisible and invincible enemies. They are over-confidence, stupidity, expectation and narcissism.

I happen to think that American politics is one of the noblest arts of mankind; and I cannot do anything else but write about it.

Writing has to support itself.

In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

I never think that anything I'm writing is bluntly political in any way. I'm not going for commentary.