You have the feeling that if you get a Pulitzer, you're somehow set for life.

Women had been on the verge of taking over the world-the Western world, anyway. Then some sexist pig in Silicon Valley invented the cell phone and women took a sidetrack on which all four billion of them would soon be happily talking to each other twenty-four hours a day, getting nothing else done, and Men Would Be Back.

As an individual with my own hurts, I go into the Garden (Gethsemane) as often as I need to. There I identify with the pain in the other, with my part in that pain, my part in tempting someone to wound me. I experience the other's pain, and God's pain, and am devastated - because their pain becomes my own. Feeling such anguish, I can forgive, or deeply repent, either for myself or on behalf of the other.

I'm so horny the crack of dawn isn't safe.

Catholics don't scream about Jesus, they scream about the bishop.

I've always been sort of interested in the rural countryside. Things happen out there that are very strange to city dwellers.

With most of my books, I'll actually go out and look at the setting. If you describe things carefully, it kind of makes the scene pop.