There's always more to a story than a body can see from the fenceline.

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.

Arguments could fill a marriage like water, running through everything, always, with no taste or color but lots of noise.

I struggle with confidence, every time. I’m never completely sure I can write another book. Maybe my scope is too grand, my questions too hard, surely readers won’t want to follow me here. A novel is like a cathedral, it knocks you down to size when you enter into it.

Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.

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.

You know what the issue is? Do you want to know? It's what these guys have decided to call America. They have the audacity to say, 'There, you sons of bitches, don't lay a finger on it. That is a finished product.'" "But any country is still in the making. Always. That's just history, people have to see that.