I just want to put some positive stuff out there. If it works great. If it doesn't no problem.

What I really like is an intelligent review. It doesn't have to be positive. A review that has some kind of insight and sometimes people say something that's startling or is so poignant.

Say and do something positive that will help the situation it doesn't take any brains to complain.

There is this concept of politics as a dirty game. It's a difficult game but it doesn't have to be dirty. I think this is what we need to bring to politics. I think politics around the world has very often been captured by big interests - 'lobbies' they call them in the States.

We don't tend to write about disease in fiction - not just teen novels but all American novels - because it doesn't fit in with our idea of the heroic romantic epic. There is room only for sacrifice heroism war politics and family struggle.

I think one of the most threatening places to be in politics is a black conservative because there are so many liberals who want to continue to reinforce a stereotype that doesn't exist about America.

I don't for the life of me understand how anybody could contemplate the results of the 2000 election in the US and say that electoral politics doesn't matter any more and that Ralph Nader was right when he said there is no difference between the two parties.

I have a lot of nice Italian winter clothes that make me look like a sophisticated Lebanese professor so my friend Robert and I go around pretending to be experts in Arabic politics. It doesn't work in the summer though. I don't have the right clothes.

Politics is a lot of serendipity. You're in the right place and the right time and you've got the right message and it either connects for you or or it doesn't.

And humility in politics means accepting that one party doesn't have all the answers recognising that working in partnership is progress not treachery.