If you bring forth what is within you, it will save you. If you do not bring it forth, it will destroy you.

Every step was a victory. He had to remember that.

I think the trick of being a writer is to basically put your cards out there all the time and be willing to be as in the dark about what happens next as your reader would be at that time.

Success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it... Err in the direction of kindness.

This may be the one clear truth of the so-called border issue: Put a poor country next to a rich one and watch which way the traffic flows. Add impediments, the traffic endeavors to flow around them. Eilimate disparity. the traffic stops.

From the beginning [of the Lincoln in the Bardo], I actually had it in mind not to write a novel. I'd kind of gotten past that point where I felt bad for never having written a novel, even to where I felt really good about it, like I was a real purist.

It seems to me that there are certain thoughts and vignettes and attitudes that I have always had the desire to represent.