I think of myself as a really happy person.

Time made me change. I gradually woke up to the realization that this is who I am, an author, a public figure, and I couldn't just hide in my study, tapping away at the keyboard and pretend that I didn't have a role to play beyond stringing words together.

Cities produce in me melancholy or a tension I don't need.

At one level you're condemned to the voice you have. But within those confines, you have a certain amount of freedom to range among your possible voices.

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.

I have relaxed into my persona as an author, although I used to fight that.

Everybody has a world, and that world is completely hidden until we begin to inquire. As soon as we do, that entire world opens to us and yields itself. And you see how full and complex it is.