At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.

I've never written nearly as much about place as people seem to think I do. I just write about class.

They stayed, many of them, because staying was easier and less scary than leaving.

My books are elegiac in the sense that they're odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination.

Not everyone writes well from a child's point of view.

America has always been a nation of small places, and as we lose them, we're losing part of ourselves.

My dad had this rock hard body and would work 12- to 13-hour days. The guys he worked with were scrap-iron guys. Nobody on that road crew had read a book in 10 years, but there was something about the way they lived I really admired.