You can be strapped to the most stable chair and still feel the world give way beneath you.

I don't want to tell people what to think. I'm the least qualified person in the world for that. If I'd go around pretending to be the expert on everything, I'd become Dan Brown, and I don't understand that. We all do our research if we're good writers, and we all work hard to get it right, but that doesn't mean we're experts in the field. The best we can do is challenge people to learn the facts themselves.

Most people in America want an easy read. I call it McFiction - books which pass right through you without you even digesting them. I don't mean a book that has two-syllable words. I mean chapters you can read in a toilet break. Happy endings. We are more of a TV culture.

You want to write something as good as what you've read.

He rises over me, a second sun, and fills me with light and heat.

It never failed to amaze me how the most ordinary day could be catapulted into the extraordinary in the blink of an eye.

Knowledge was power, but a good librarian did not hoard the gift. She taught others how to find, where to look, how to see.