Ideological Contrasts Quotes

Ideas came with explosive immediacy, like an instant birth. Human thought is like a monstrous pendulum; it keeps swinging from one extreme to the other.

During my first visit, I was really struck by how deeply religious many Oklahomans are. It is a very conservative state and as somebody who grew up in a very liberal country, it was jarring to me at first.

The people on my mum's side of the family are atheist intellectuals who are ueber-proper. My dad's side of the family are missionaries who are more comfortable sitting around in sweatpants than they are in a five-star restaurant. But those two influences converged in my life.

In campaigns we concentrate on the differences [between the candidates.]

All of my work has been about ideas of utopia and dystopia. I think that's what gives America interest. It's many things all at once. It's such a complicated society.

Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.

You can write a radical Norwegian or a conservative Norwegian. And when I changed to a conservative Norwegian, I gained this distance or objectivity in the language. The gap released something in me, and in the writing, which made it possible for the protagonist to think thoughts I had never myself thought.

Of course I have got concerns. Donald Trump and I differ on a whole bunch of issues.