Wanting to know absolutely what a story is about, and to be able to say it in a few sentences, is dangerous: it can lead us to wanting to possess a story as we possess a cup... A story can always break into pieces while it sits inside a book on a shelf; and, decades after we have read it even twenty times, it can open us up, by cut or caress, to a new truth.

What is art if not a concentrated and impassioned effort to make something with the little we have, the little we see?

I truly believe the art's larger than the artist. Who cares about John Steinbeck? I care about the Joad family.

Romance dies hard, because its very nature is to want to live.

I work out four days a week in the off-season, and in the warm, running weather months, I do five days. A push/pull regime of weightlifting, cycling, and the occasional Saturday or Sunday run with my oldest son, even if it's cold out.

I have always known that writing fiction had little effect on the world; that if it did, young men would not have gone to war after The Iliad.

I really think that if there's any one enemy to human creativity, especially creative writing, it's self-consciousness.