The mountains have always been here, and in them, the bears.

A novel that features real people is complicated, but in the end, that extra challenge is all for the good.

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

The heart of it all is mystery, and science is at best only the peripheral trappings to that mystery--a ragged barbed-wire fence through which mystery travels, back and forth, unencumbered by anything so frail as man's knowledge.

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.

I don't think I'm a natural novelist. Plot is definitely one of my weaker points. I've been working on it a long time, and it's not getting much better.

Nothing will get you into trouble so deep or as sad as faith.