I've always operated with a great deal of self-doubt. Every time I start a new book it's like, well, this one will destroy the career and I have to overcome that feeling especially in the first hundred pages of the book.

I don't write a quick draft and then revise; instead, I work slowly page by page, revising and polishing.

Life is a train ride, and at the many stations along the route, people important to us debark, never to get aboard again, until by the end of the journey, we sit in a passenger car where most of the seats are empty.

Your sense of responsibility to others can never be excessive.

We are coming out of a century that was taught that one way of looking at the world, that one form of behavior, is as valid as another. The idea of true evil has been blown away.

As much as I've produced it looks to people like I must have written quickly, but it isn't that - because I put in in a sixty- or seventy-hour week.

The world is full of broken people. Splints, casts, miracle drugs, and time can't mend fractured hearts, wounded hearts, wounded minds, torn spirits.