I don't get far enough into a boring book to hate it.

I don't really write for an audience. I just write what the subject seems to me to require.

I have been an outsider in journalism and in the academy, because I never fully belonged to any of them.

I would rather listen to plays in the car than read them.

I'm hardly macho. I present myself as very unnoticeable.

I have nothing against priests. In fact, I tried for a time to be one... It should be clear, then, that I respect, and am often fond of, the many priests in my life.

There's an interesting contrast between born Catholics and converts. Converts are often much more rule-directed. Catholicism isn't something that they breathed in from their childhood, so they think that if you don't toe the line on abstract doctrine you can't be part of the Church.