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.

A literary achievement of the highest order.

There are things in this universe that we cannot control, and then there are the things we can. . . . Let fate, coincidence, and accident conspire; human beings must act on reason.

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.

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.

Post-modernism is dead because it didn't address human needs.

Hemingway said the only way to write about a place is to leave it.