Everyone knows everything eventually.

Sometimes not having any idea where we’re going works out better than we could possibly have imagined.

There are, of course, people who didn't create the trouble they're in, but lots of them do.

When well told, a story captured the subtle movement of change. If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads.

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.

That was the way things worked. When you were looking for the big fight, the moment that you thought would knock everything over, nothing much happened at all.

When I wrote nonfiction, my best work was the really personal stuff.