I could teach. I could wait tables. I could cook in a restaurant. Food and teaching were the two skills I had.

I always feel it is a shortcoming of mine as a reader and as a writer that I frankly need to like somebody.

The hardest piece of nonfiction I ever wrote isn't anywhere close to the easiest piece of fiction I never wrote.

Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected.

My novels are very much the same, as I think many people's novels are. No matter how hard I try to do otherwise, the books always wind up being "a group of strangers are thrown together by circumstance and form a society."

You are the same person in every aspect of your life, and you have to be a responsible person in every aspect of your life.

For the most part wisdom comes in chips rather than blocks. You have to be willing to gather them constantly, and from sources you never imagined to be probable. No one chip gives you the answer for everything. No one chip stays in the same place throughout your entire life. The secret is to keep adding voices, adding ideas, and moving things around as you put together your life. If you’re lucky, putting together your life is a process that will last through every single day you’re alive.