You don't say, I'm going to be a writer when I grow up - at least I didn't.

Here's what I mean by the miracle of language. When you're falling into a good book, exactly as you might fall into a dream, a little conduit opens, a passageway between a reader's heart and a writer's, a connection that transcends the barriers of continents and generations and even death ... And here's the magic. You're different. You can never go back to being exactly the same person you were before you disappeared into that book.

Watching teething babies is like watching over a thermonuclear reactor-it is best done in shifts, by well-rested people.

To say a person is a happy person or an unhappy person is ridiculous. We are a thousand different kinds of people every hour.

WWII is something contemporary readers already know a lot about. If our schools are doing their jobs, they know about the invasion of Normandy, the Hitler Youth, the Holocaust, and at least a few of the horrors of the Eastern Front.

Anyone who has spent a few nights in a tent during a storm can tell you: The world doesn't care all that much if you live or die.

Travel definitely affects me as a writer.