Your understanding of a place changes the longer you stay; you discover more, and your own life gets woven into the fabric of the community.

You missed a lot of heartache, sure. But David, you missed a lot of joy.

After Memory Keepers Daughter, it took me a few months to shut out the world. I really had to turn off the Internet and sort of cloister myself away from the world again and sink into that psychic space to write again.

Writing is always a process of discovery—I never know the end, or even the events on the next page, until they happen. There’s a constant interplay between the imagining and shaping of the story.

He fished in his pocket for his keys and instead pulled out the last geode, gray and smooth, earth-shaped. He held it, warming in his palm, thinking of all mysteries the world contained: layers of stone, concealed beneath the flesh of earth and grass; these dull rocks, with their glimmering hidden hearts.

Music is like you touch the pulse of the world. Music is always happening, and sometimes you get to touch it for a while, and when you do you know that everything's connetcted to everything else.

She saw herself moving through another life, an exotic, difficult, satisfying life.