There's a reason prophets perform miracles; language lacks the power to describe faith.

I think the idea of migration through time is very important because every human being does that and it unites us with people who migrate through geography.

When I'm really plugged in I find it difficult to write. It's like digging a well. If you make a void, something moves in to fill it. Writing books is like that. It's mostly about freeing up time, doing nothing, and in that time some writing starts to happen. We need to figure out how to maintain those voids.

It's in being read that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book become one of a million different books . . .

If your book is set in the plantation days of the slave-owning South and you write a little romance between two slave owners without acknowledging the system they live, that's a political gesture.

Outside of America, there are many people, myself included, who champion values that, in some senses, could be thought of as traditionally American - the idea that everybody's equal, that the rights of women and men should be the same, that there should be no discrimination on religious or sexual orientation, that democracy and rule of law and due process are the ways in which society should govern themselves and minorities should be cared for.

A beard is something that is almost like a mirror to the viewer. When someone sees you wearing a beard, they're seeing something in their own imagination because it's still me whether I'm bearded or not.