It was cold out there, bitter, biting, cutting, piercing, hyperborean, marmoreal cold, and there were all these Minnesotans running around outdoors, happy as lambs in the spring.

I believe that writing is derivative. I think good writing comes from good reading.

You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars.

The storytelling tradition that you bring from the South, I don't know where it arose, but it's still there. You can't go to the feed store, or the country courthouse without running into storytellers.

To read the papers and to listen to the news... one would think the country is in terrible trouble. You do not get that impression when you travel the back roads and the small towns do care about their country and wish it well.

I'm not any kind of social reformer.

I started out thinking of America as highways and state lines. As I got to know it better, I began to think of it as rivers.