If I'm not working, I'm not happy. That's it. That's the prerequisite for me for happiness.

I've written only two novels, but they're both long ones, and they each took a decade to write.

The storytelling gift is innate: one has it or one doesn't. But style is at least partly a learned thing: one refines it by looking and listening and reading and practice - by work.

All those layers of silence upon silence.

Storytelling and elegant style don't always go hand in hand.

There's a big anti-intellectual strain in the American south, and there always has been. We're not big on thought.

There's nothing like having a sympathetic reader who asks the right questions, who understands what you're trying to achieve and only wants to make it better.