I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it.

You should not have assault rifles in your home.

I love telling people what to read. It's my favorite thing in the world, to buy books and force books on people, take bad books away from people, give them better books.

You can't be a good person when you're writing and a bad person to your husband or a bad friend.

I think of Nashville as a very natural place. We're easy going, we are ourselves. There isn't a lot of preening or trying to impress. So it's an easy place to just be and that is a good state from which to write.

There was no one clear point of loss. It happened over and over again in a thousand small ways and the only truth there was to learn was that there was no getting used to it.

Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.