If you let people believe that you are weak, sooner or later you’re going to have to kill them.

The devil's in the details. The way I view my job is to bring the reader into a world they otherwise could not enter and let them see it through the character's eyes. And you can only do that with detail. The details make the characters distinct from one another. If you can give them those little grace notes, those little touches, that's what makes the reader relate.

I think you can use fiction to get inside people's minds.

I've been writing since I was six years old. It's hard to imagine stopping. I would hate to think that I've already written my best book.

With a 660-page book, you don't read every sentence aloud. I am terrified for the poor guy doing the audio book. But I do because I think we hear them aloud even if it's not an audio book. The other goofy thing I do is I examine the shape of the words but not the words themselves. Then I ask myself, "Does it look like what it is?" If it's a sequence where I want to grab the reader and not let the reader go then it needs to look dense. But at times I want the reader to focus on a certain word or a certain image and pause there.

There are various kinds of savagery: emotional, spiritual, economic, and cultural savagery.

I don't recognize myself. I don't know who I am anymore." And it's all fun and games until someone loses an I.