Quit smoking, and observe posted speed limits. This will improve your odds of getting old enough to be wise.

Pay attention to your passions. They are the key to starting and finishing the book you are meant to write. I don't believe in talent. I believe in passion.

No other continent has endured such an unspeakably bizarre combination of foreign thievery and foreign goodwill.

It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.

There's a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly straight, so after all it wasn't a forest but an orchard of graves. Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.

I don't bring expectations to any of my books. I don't tell people what to do. I want to invite them in.

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