For me, the shaping of the story is more important than accuracy.

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

One thing I'm always thinking about myself is what am I willing to make up? And the answer is not much.

I've always traveled. I'm a professor in a limited way. I teach one class two quarters out of four, so I get traveling done.

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.

I was in Mongolia, pretty extreme situations. We were sick with dysentery, we were sick with bronchitis. I had been bitten by a dog for the first time in my life and my whole hand was black, and there was no way to even think of getting a rabies shot without driving for five days, and then you wouldn't have wanted that needle in your skin anyway. And I had my period. Everything was wrong at one time. Like, I couldn't have been more uncomfortable. And I stayed up - it was too cold to sleep.

I write really well on the road.