People are so helpful. People will stop what they're doing to show you something, to walk with you through a section of the town, or explain how a suspension bridge really works.

If you get down about the state of American culture, just remember there are still more public libraries in this country than there are McDonalds.

Napoleon could never imagine that some people loved their country as much as he loved his own.

In time I began to understand that it's when you start writing that you really find out what you don't know and need to know.

I love to go to the places where things happen. I like to walk the walk and see how the light falls and what winter feels like.

You can't learn to play the piano without playing the piano, you can't learn to write without writing, and, in many ways, you can't learn to think without thinking. Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.

On Christmas morning when I was a child, my mother would leave a book wrapped at the foot of the bed, which was a hint that Santa had come. It was also her way of keeping us in bed a little longer before we went downstairs. So I've always associated books with happiness and gifts. And they are. I can't get enough of them.