The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know.

I stir in bed and the memories rise out of me like a buzz of flies from a carcass. I crave to be rid of them.

I have my own sheep and I literally sheer the sheep and knot sweaters for friends and family from scratch.

the novel is inherently a political instrument, regardless of its subject. It invites you - more than invites you, induces you - to live inside another person's skin. It creates empathy. And that's the antidote to bigotry. The novel doesn't just tell you about another life, which is what a newspaper would do. It makes you live another life, inhabit another perspective. And that's very important.

I know I'm a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.

The most important part of a story is the piece of it you don't know.

There's always a part of your nation's history that you haven't been told that... has a powerful impact on how you yourself may behave and may believe.