When you are working on something, you have to believe that people will still be reading when you're done!

The best moment in writing any book is when you just can't wait to get back to the writing, when you can't wait to re-enter that fictional place, when your fictional town feels even more real than the town where you actually live.

In terms of the idea of long-term occupation - I have been reading a little bit more about this period - and you can see in that occupation are many lessons for the current occupation of Iraq. So we have these connections that go way back that people aren't aware of.

They say behind mountains are more mountains.

We need literature because we wouldn’t fully know ourselves without it. We need good literature to be fully human.

We try to keep the beautiful memories, but other things from the past creep up on us.

I'm just melancholy by nature, and a lot of that gets into my writing.