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.

I always told my dad I'd play professional football.

For me, writing historical fiction is all about finding a balance between reading, traveling, looking, imagining, and dreaming.

I never played inside as a kid - even in the rain I'd go out.

My sister-in-law is a painter, and I'll say, how long did it take you to paint that painting. She'll say, It took me maybe three days, but it took me all my life to get the skills to paint that painting.

Things hardly ever work on the first try. We'll make another, a better one.

The easier an experience, or the more entrenched, or the more familiar, the fainter our sensation of it becomes. This is true of chocolate and marriages and hometowns and narrative structures. Complexities wane, miracles become unremarkable, and if we're not careful, pretty soon we're gazing out at our lives as if through a burlap sack.