Whenever citizens are seen routinely as enemies of their own government, writers are rountinely seen to be the most dangerous enemies.

A novelist is a person who lives in other people's skins.

I've known several cases of writers who decide to write about something and they research the hell out of it and when they're ready to write, they can't move because they are so burdened. I start writing. Whatever I need somehow comes to hand.

Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.

Uncharged with invisible meaning, the visible is nothing, mere clay; and without visible circumstance, a territory, to connect to, our spirit is shapeless, nameless, and undefined.

I thought of myself as a writer for years before I got around to writing anything.

Most people are quiet in the world, and live in it tentatively, as if it were not their own.