There's still a fascination with somebody who can write at book length, no matter what the book is.

Southerners have many fine qualities, charm and civility among them, and a sense of the tragic.

Evil is no faceless stranger, living in a distant neighborhood. Evil has a wholesome, hometown face, with merry eyes and an open smile. Evil walks among us, wearing a mask which looks like all our faces.

I always enjoyed the kids, but I didn't enjoy the bureaucracy of the educational system.

The world is a very complex and interesting place and that is what I really want my fiction to say: wake up to how amazing the world is.

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.

Most universities are no longer temples of knowledge, but of power, and true moderns worship there.