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.

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.

I'm a natural novelist. I'm interested in the person and the group, and how they mesh. And one of the ways I don't want them to mesh is for the person to be subsumed into the group.

In his 30 years of broadcasting and publishing fiction, Garrison Keillor has set the laugh bar pretty high.

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.

In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it.

Before I write a novel, images float around in my head that work like icons - they are meaningless in themselves, but serve as reminders.