I live in a rural part of Virginia surrounded by farms and farmers.

From my earliest memory, times of crisis seemed to end up with women in the kitchen preparing food for men.

I'm never going to tell the reader what to believe; I'm going to examine these characters that believe different ways, and examine their motives.

Recall that whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of the dirt.

It's a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can't begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else.

Something in me was always watching life from the outside, permanently obsessed with the notion of belonging vs. not-belonging [to a group]. It did not make for a happy childhood, but it was excellent training for a writer.

The daily work - that goes on, it adds up.