“I'm not the kind of writer who's able to block out the world around me. I'm mindful of our own haves and have-nots, how our culture often blames and punishes the have-nots. I worry about our precarious economic and political climate.”

“In fact, I think - our view of this is that while the agreement, the compromise did not achieve the kind of super-sized deficit reduction that we sought, it did end the uncertainty around the perception, the possibility that the United States might default on its obligations for its first time. That”