I had been a reporter for 15 years when I set out to write my first novel. I knew how to research an article or profile a subject - skills that I assumed would be useless when it came to fiction. It was from my imagination that the characters in my story would emerge.

M*A*S*H offered real characters and everybody identified with them because they had such soul. The humor was intelligent and it always assumed that you had an intellect.

The idea of winning a doctor's degree gradually assumed the aspect of a great moral struggle and the moral fight possessed immense attraction for me.

Julia progresses from cradle to grave showing how government makes every good thing in her life possible. The weak economy high unemployment falling wages rising gas prices the national debt the insolvency of entitlements - all these are fictionally assumed away in a cartoon that is produced by a president who wants us to forget about them.

That the Jews assumed a right exclusively to the benefits of God will be a lasting witness against them and the same will it be against Christians.

I had been feeling a little rum. I didn't think it was anything serious because years ago I felt a lump and it was benign. I assumed this would be too. It kind of takes the wind out of your sails and I don't know what the future holds if anything.

The famous saying 'God is love' it is generally assumed means that God is like our immediate emotional indulgence not that the meaning of love ought to have something of the 'otherness' and terror of God.

I lost some of my friends because I got so famous people who just assumed that I would be different now. I felt like everyone hated me. That is the most unhappy time of my life.

More recently as faith gave way to materialism anti-Semitism assumed a secular mode harnessing itself to the dominant ideologies of both the Left and the Right.

Before this learning experience I had assumed that with regard to programs that sought to help people out of poverty the political world was essentially divided into two camps: conservatives who opposed these for a variety of reasons and liberals who supported them.