Do you write novels?" I said. "Novels, Lord no," she said. "I can't even stay married.

There's this great Ron Carlson story, "A Note on the Type," and it's about this guy who keeps escaping from prison. He's really good at escaping, but he gets caught all the time, because he can't stop writing his name on underpasses where he's running from the law. And there's this whole beautiful paragraph about how to run is to write. And, you know, it's obviously about the writer's life.

There was something about the prairie for me—it wasn’t where I had come from, but when I moved there it just took me in and I knew I couldn’t ever stop living under that big sky.

Sometimes I'm writing for magazines on assignment, but the university has to be patient with me. I mean, during the ten-week periods that I have a class, I'm there every Thursday night or whatever it is, but sometimes that's all I'm there, because I'm somewhere else the rest of the time.

There are three principles to remember if you are to teach a human being anything, and they are consistency, consistency, consistency.They are such fragile creatures to begin with, with poor eyes, poorer hearing, and no sense of smell left to speak of, it's no wonder they are made of fear. Some centuries ago they moved inside and with that move went nine-tenths of their intuition. It is almost unmerciful to make them live so long when they spend their lives in so much pain.

Traveling is my priority, because it drives the writing, so I teach around the travel, and sometimes the travel is the teaching.

Movement helps keep me centered. I am a disaster, for instance, at sitting meditation, but I'm pretty decent at walking meditation.