The first-person viewpoint is more enjoyable to write, because it lets me meander more freely, and it can reveal more of the character's self-delusions. Really all the advantages are with first-person, so I'm sorry I don't get to pick and choose.

Farmers are patient men. They got to be. Got to see those seeds come up week by week, fraction by fraction, and sweat it out for some days not knowing yet is it weeds or vegetables.

My cousin Roger once told me, on the eve of his third wedding, that he felt marriage was addictive. Then he corrected himself. I mean early marriage, he said. The very start of a marriage. It's like a whole new beginning. You're entirely brand-new people; you haven't made any mistakes yet. You have a new place to live and new dishes and this new kind of, like, identity, this 'we' that gets invited everywhere together now. Why, sometimes your wife will have a brand-new name, even.

I can never tell ahead of time which book will give me trouble - some balk every step of the way, others seem to write themselves - but certainly the mechanics of writing, finding the time and the psychic space, are easier now that my children are grown.

I don't know what takes more courage: surviving a lifelong endurance test because you once made a promise or breaking free, disrupting all your world.

I wonder how many times we dream that kind of dream-something strange and illogical-and fail to realize God is trying to tell us something.

I've always enjoyed studying the small clues that indicate a particular class level.