“Any writing teacher tells you to write what you know, and for better or for worse, Washington is a world I know well.”

“My dad has a dry, deadpan sense of humor, and my mom has an unexpected, wacky take on things. They really encouraged laughing at ourselves and the weirdness of situations that come up growing up in...”

“A cheap writer has an expensive thoughts.”

“It's rewarding if you have an opportunity to do something or to serve, you always give in your best. The world has changed, yes! But that shouldn't make you behave otherwise to the detriment of you...”

“The people of great value are the people who have a noble inner man”

“I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,I see my father strolling outunder the ochre sandstone arch, thered tiles glinting like bentplates of blood behind his head, Isee my mother...”

“We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the world they really believed in...”

“Id never heard my parents make love. If they made love, they did it silently, like bank robbers, like surgeons.”

“Write the words "The FIve Senses" on an index card and tack it to a bulletin board above your desk. You should have a bulletin board above your desk, if at all possible. Some place where you can ta...”