The three most important documents a free society gives are a birth certificate, a passport, and a library card.

I try to avoid experience if I can. Most experience is bad.

The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this terrifying century.

Facts are the images of history, just as images are the facts of fiction.

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'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.

And so the ordinary unendurable torments we all experienced were indeed exceptional in the way they were absorbed in each heart.