A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.

There are some of us who have to pay for our faith every step of the way and who have to work out dramatically what it would be like without it and if being without it would be ultimately possible or not.

When using dialect, use it lightly. A dialect word here and there is enough. All you want to do is suggest. Never let it call attention to itself.

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.

I suppose half of writing is overcoming the revulsion you feel when you sit down to it.

There is a certain embarrassment about being a storyteller in these times when stories are considered not quite as satisfying as statements and statements not quite as satisfying as statistics; but in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells.

Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.