Fiction is harder for me than nonfiction - more gratifying, as a result, when it succeeds.

Ive lost much of my heart and the spark or fire that once created, or produced, the art of fiction.

Even the largest of my dreams and ambitions, I realize with increasing dismay, were puny, measly, compared to the object of my dreaming. I would not say my life to date has been built overmuch of compromise, but still, it surrounds me.

It is a kind of church, back in these last cores. It may not be your church -- this last one percent of the West – but it is mine, and I am asking unashamedly to be allowed to continue worshipping the miracle of the planet, and the worship of a natural system not yet touched, never touched by the machines of man. A place with the residue of God – the scent, feel, sight, taste, and sound of God – forever fresh upon it

Fit in where you don't: make your own space..be different..don't give in. Exist somewhere you're not suppose to, or where you don't want to. Be your own men; do what you want, and don't hurt anybdoy

I think a novelist must be more tender with living or 'real' people. The moral imperative of having been entrusted with their story looms before you every day, in every sentence.

How we fall into grace. You can't work or earn your way into it. You just fall. It lies below, it lies beyond. It comes to you, unbidden.