I know I learn a lot from the students in my class and I'm not just saying that to sound like some generous teacher.

What's so exciting and terrifying about the writing process is that it really is an act of exploration and discovery. With all of us, not just writers, there is a sort of knowledge of the other. We have a lot more in common than we realize, and I think writing is really a sustained act of empathy.

I was really surprised at the success of 'House of Sand and Fog,' because it is so awfully dark. Believe it or not, when writing it, I never had the word 'tragedy' in my head - I wasn't trying to write a dark book at all.

It is not hard to live through a day, if you can live through a moment.

Talent is cheap. What really matters is discipline.

I love the earth too much to contemplate a life apart from it, although I believe in that life.

Years later I would hear my father say the divorce had left him dating his children. That still meant picking us up every Sunday for a matinee and, if he had the money, an early dinner somewhere.