I really do think that our subconscious gets corrupted with fear, and fear is how news media - all media - makes us [watch] long enough to get to the Tide commercial. That's all it's about. Generating fear so that we can buy the proper laundry detergent.

Anytime you write about priests or cops, they're hot-button professions.

Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft.

Society was nothing but a long, dull dinner party conversation in which one was forced to speak to one's partner on both the left and the right.

But these last months had turned him around and now Gen saw there could be as much virtue in letting go of what you knew as there had ever been in gathering new information. He worked as hard at forgetting as he had ever worked to learn.

I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing.

The idea I pursue is the one that keeps coming back to me. The characters I think about as I'm falling asleep at night or when I'm driving to the grocery store are the one's I wind up writing about.