What sustains me is to be with my family and to write.

It's a brooding melancholy that haunts me.

accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart.

When it comes time to sit down and write the next book, you're deathly afraid that you're not up to the task. That was certainly the case with me after Snow Falling on Cedars.

None of those other things makes a difference. Love is the strongest thing in the world, you know. Nothing can touch it. Nothing comes close. If we love each other we're safe from it all. Love is the biggest thing there is.

What some people interpret as brooding melancholy is serenity. I don't feel required to grasp all the time.

I was aware that there is an expectation that writers inevitably falter at this stage, that they fail to live up to the promise of their first successful book, that the next book never pleases the way the prior one did. It simply increased my sense of being challenged.