I wonder if politicians know less about the land, now that they campaign by air.

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

One of the accidental joys of my writing life has been that I've had some lovely, surprisingly good fortune with readers, and I've brought readers to my dad's work. I can't tell you the joy that gives me. Because my father's work was masterful.

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

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

Short story writers simply do what human beings have always done. They write stories because they have to; because they cannot rest until they have tried as hard as they can to write the stories. They cannot rest because they are human, and all of us need to speak into the silence of mortality, to interrupt and ever so briefly stop that quiet flow, and with stories try to understand at least some of it.

Talent is cheap. What really matters is discipline.