My father wears his faith like the bronze breastplate of God's footsoldiers while our mother's is more like a good cloth coat with a secondhand fit.

I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.

Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.

We agreed with him in principal - we were little scientists, born and bred. But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.

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

Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least 100 pages that go into the trashcan before it finally begins to work. It's discouraging, but necessary to write those pages. I try to consider them pages -100 to zero of the novel.

No reporter worth his buttons will let the facts intrude on a good story.