If novels and stories are bulletins from the progressive states of ignorance a writer passes through over the years, observations and opinions about horses are all the more so, since horses are more mysterious than life and harder to understand.

The body, the mind, and the spirit don't form a pyramid, they form a circle. Each of them runs into the other two. The body isn't below the mind and the spirit; from the point of view it's between them. if you reside too much in the mind, then you get too abstract and cut off from the world. You long for the spiritual life, but you can't get to it, and you fall into despair. The exercise of the senses frees you from abstraction and opens the way to transcendence.

Well, in fact everybody - everybody - in the entire nation has enough stuff in their life to write about that's interesting that they could write their autobiography. And in the end that's why I find people interesting.

The only siblings I have are half-siblings. My nuclear family would have been an extra-suffocating threesome. Instead, I have an interesting brother and sister, in-laws, and darling nephews.

Many said that now there was no hope of salvation, for a man might do anything and be in the wrong. There was no way to tell. It was better to stay on the steading and mind the cows and be content with such days as are left to one and cease to wonder about life everlasting.

My characters never die screaming in rage. They attempt to pull themselves back together and go on. And that's basically a conservative view of life.

Is human nature basically good or evil? No economist can embark upon his profession without considering this question, and yet they all seem to. And they all seem to think human nature is basically good, or they wouldn't be surprised by the effects of deregulation.