I'm not afraid of just cranking it out and seeing what comes out of my subconscious. Because I don't always know what I'm feeling. I do a lot of rewriting later. But that first blast feels like a spigot - like it's coming from somewhere else.

New York was the Promised Land growing up. Writers were gods! The great gods of American culture... I thought.

The ridiculous way that workplace politics are conducted completely gets in the way of excellence in America.

Sometimes I feel that my job on earth is to put Julie White through horrible things, watch her writhe and then recover.

If you are starving and young and in search of answers as to why your life is so difficult, fundamentalism can be alluring. We know this for a fact because former members of Boko Haram have admitted it: They offer impressionable young people money and the promise of food, while the group's mentors twist their minds with fanaticism.

When you're in the States and you're a writer and you've got money and you walk into a bank, you're a bum with money.

It is human nature to be shortsighted and to lose momentum to make changes once the story is out of the headlines and there aren't financial incentives or political rewards. We owe to ourselves to learn from the past so we can try to do better.

A devastating commentary on the war in Iraq is that we have been unable to spend money on infrastructure.