It's very liberating for me to realize that I don't have to step up to the plate with a plot that involves the U.N. Security Council.

When I finally gave up any hope of doing anything representative of the American family, I actually seemed to have tapped into other people's weirdness in that way.

If you're interested in how people behave, if you're interested in the way they talk about themselves, the way the conceive of themselves, it's very hard to ignore drugs nowadays, because that is so much part of the conversation.

The real pleasure in writing this, for me, was discovering how little you need.

And Silence of the Lambs is a really smart book.

I voluntarily inflicted a certain level of insanity on myself.

It's not surprising to see in my own work, looking back, and in the work of some of my peers, an attention to family. It's nice to write a book that does tend toward significance and meaning, and where else are you sure of finding it?

I was about 13, in some ways, when I wrote the first book. Approximately 18 when I wrote the second.

The Mekons were kind of like the background music of my life.

But as far as being popular, yeah, I think Dave Barry is really funny.

It's just a matter of writing the kind of book I enjoy reading. Something better be happening at the beginning, and then on every page after, or I get irritated.

I really enjoy doing both, but I didn't write nonfiction until 1994.

I used to think it was hard to write, and I still find the process more or less unpleasant, but if I know what I'm doing it rattles along, then the rewrite whips it into shape rather quickly.

We may freak out globally, but we suffer locally.

It seems to me self-evident that if you have a life, things happen in it, and certain things do change; certain things end. People you know die.

I was unwise enough to actually mention this in public a few times, and in fact to point out that there were two versions of the book now. One of them had somebody else's name on the cover, one had my name on the cover.

's one of the perversities of the age: I'm embarrassed by its success, but I'm happy it's selling.

I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then... it's sort of like taking the training wheels off, trying to write a book that's fun in the same way without relying on quite such mechanical or external beats.

It's very liberating for me to realize that I don't have to step up to the plate with a plot that involves the U.N. Security Council.

I was a late child from my parents, so I grew up surrounded by people a lot older than me. I think even when I was 21, I felt like I was a 70-year-old man.

I hate that word dysfunction.

I look at my father, who was in many ways an unhappy person, but who, not long before he got sick, said that the greatest source of satisfaction in his life had been going to work in the company of other workers.

I feel as if I'm clearly part of a trend among writers who take themselves seriously - and I confess to taking myself as seriously as the next writer.

Brooklyn was like Philadelphia made better by its proximity to Manhattan.

Nice people dont necessarily fall in love with nice people.

Whether anybody was home meant everything to a house. It was more than a major fact it was the only fact ... The family was the houses soul.

As with all forms of liberation, of which the liberation of women is only one example, it is easy to suppose in a time of freedom that the darker days of repression can never come again.

The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage.

Popularity has become its own justification.

The writer’s life is a life of revisions.

We need to keep investing in economic and homeland security. We need to bank on the right kind of economic development. We need to embrace opportunities, but with the right kind of safeguards.

We must support initiatives that provide clear, concrete measures and milestones that our troops need for defeating the insurgency, building up Iraqi security forces, and handing over Iraq to the Iraqi people.

No matter how you cut it, this real debate on personal accounts is about the legitimacy of Social Security; it's not about the solvency of Social Security.

Conservatism has had from its inception vigorously positive, intellectually rigorous agenda and thinking. That agenda should have in my three pillars: strengthen the economy, strengthen our security, and strengthen our families.

The men and women of our armed forces played an instrumental role in the election process - securing polling sites and providing security - that allowed so many Iraqis the opportunity to vote freely for the first time ever.

First, the security and privacy of sensitive taxpayer information is absolutely essential.

It's true that the war in Iraq opened a distance in relations between part of Europe and the U.S. government, but our basic ties are stronger than that. We share democracy, free markets and a commitment to Western security. We differ on how to guarantee that security.

The lack of substantial resources and staffing along the Northern U.S. border poses a real security threat.

In addition to a timeline, I have proposed that U.S. troops be removed from front line combat positions in Iraqi cities and towns, turning over daily security patrols, interactions with citizens, and any offensive security actions to the Iraqis themselves.

Well, Mr. Speaker, if so many of these Iraqis are ready to come up and to provide the security, the police work in the country, then surely there should be no problem with putting American forces into the background instead of having them up front.

Effective use of Braille is as important to the blind as independent mobility, knowledge in the use of adaptive technology, and the core belief that equality, opportunity and security are truly possible for all people who are blind.

It's hard to exaggerate the importance of preserving the financial integrity of Social Security.

A salute from this corner to President Bush for saying he was willing to investigate raising or eliminating the cap on salaries subject to the Social Security tax.

Our nation owes a debt of gratitude to the 9/11 Commission members for their valuable service and important recommendations to improve homeland security.

And because of these programs like Medicare, Medicare prescription drugs, Social Security, we now have the healthiest and wealthiest group of senior citizens that the world has ever seen. This is a continuing commitment to that.

From protecting our natural resources to providing maritime security and national defense, the Coast Guard's duties are broad in scope, and the performance of those duties has never been more important.

For the next century, the Republicans have agreed that we will promote the dignity and future of every individual by building a free society under a limited, accountable government that protects liberty, security and prosperity for a brighter American dream.

Women would be disproportionately affected by the privatization of social security. It is one of the most important safety nets for American women in old age, or in times of disability, to insure financial income for their families.

We have a serious structural deficit problem. And it needs to be addressed. The president is trying to address it through reforms of Social Security, but the problem is there with other entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid.