Thomas Mallon

"You may be intellectually ecstatic or aesthetically aggrieved at the idea of a Library of Congress in a cigarette pack, but fear is not really the appropriate reaction to this imminence."

"The romantic appeal of solar sailing has ensured that its advocates consistently come from the worlds of both science fiction and science fact."

"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 late Tom Wicker's biography of Nixon, called 'One of Us,' is really quite good: you see the biographer discovering dimensions of sympathy for his subject that he hadn't expected to feel."

"I was raised - and still consider myself to be - Catholic, though I'm non-practicing and haven't fulfilled my Easter duty since sometime during the Nixon years. I'm assailed by all kinds of stimulating doubts, but I do believe in God."

"I have a picture of the Pont Neuf on a wall in my apartment, but i know that Paris is really on the closet shelf, in the box next to the sleeping bag, with the rest of my diaries."