If no one heard your sounds then you did not really make them.

No land was ever acquired honestly in the history of the earth.

You have to believe in yourself and only trust your own vision and instincts. If Id listened to what other people thought about my work in the first 10 years that I was a writer, I never would have made it to begin with.

Each time a high-wage job is lost, a family is turned upside down. And that affects the communities where they live.

My first published novel, American Rust, took three and a half years of full-time work to write. But I wrote two apprentice novels before that.

You ought to be able to grow up in a place and not have to get the hell out of it when you turn eighteen.

When I finish a book, I get extremely restless; I have to aggressively find ways to occupy myself; going off into the woods alone, doing things that are physically or mentally demanding to keep myself busy until the next big idea comes.