Writers shouldn’t underestimate the difficulty of what they’re doing, and they should treat it with great seriousness. You’re doing something that really matters, you’re telling stories that have an impact on other people and on the culture. You should tell the best stories you can possibly tell and put everything you’ve got into it.

I have traveled the entire state and spent a lot of time out of doors. So I have known the landscape of the Columbia Basin for quite a while, and I have had this strong feeling about it for many years.

I became paralyzed as an artist with writer's block.

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.

When I went to college I took a creative writing class and decided in a week to be a writer.

You should learn to say nothing that will cause you regret. You should not say what is not in your heart - or what is only in your heart for a moment. But you know this - silence is better.

Even though I may not intend it when I set out to write the book, these places just emerge as major players in what I'm doing, almost as if they are insisting on it.