L.A., for me, is a perfect microcosm of America - because it's so profligate, and so glamorous, and so anti-intellectual, finally.

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What makes 'The Lorax' such a powerful fable is partly its shamelessness. It pulls no punches; it wears its teacher heart on its sleeve.

Do we seek delicate phraseology in politics or other forms of public life? We do not.

You're lucky if people like your book, and the more people that like it, the luckier I feel.

I never seem to leave L.A., though I left L.A.

Trophy hunters are not Everyman. These world-traveling endangered-species shooters are a far cry from the hunters who spend weekends in the American outback near their suburban or rural homes.

People who are obsessed amuse me.

Children depend mightily on animals for comfort, inspiration, imagination, and art. And parents have long recognized this.

More than two million years ago, mammoths and Asian elephants took different evolutionary paths - and around the same time, according to DNA research, so did their lumbering relatives in Africa.

In the 1970s, Safari Club International asked the federal government to approve its import of 1,125 not-yet-killed trophies of 40 endangered species, including gorillas, orangutans and tigers, according to the Humane Society of the United States.

We read our children stories starring elephants and monkeys and bears to teach them about nobility, curiosity and courage, to warn them against selfishness and stubbornness.

In Hiroshima, bombed Aug. 6, 1945, no warning was given of the air attack, and thus no escape was possible for the mostly women, children and old people who fell victim.

My motto is, if you love something, don't set it free. No matter how hard it struggles. That would be stupid.

When it comes to American Indians, mainstream America suffers from willful blindness.

Domestic realism has dominated the American marketplace for decades now. It leeches into literary fiction, and I don't think it's that rich a vein.