What I have since realized is that if people expect you to be brave, sometimes you pretend that you are, even when you are frightened down to your very bones.

A person isn't a bird. You can't cage a person.

I don't remember titles of books or authors from when I was young. I remember the title of only one book, which was 'The Timber Toes.' I remember it was a family of little wooden people who lived in the woods, and for some reason that stayed with me.

It wasn't that I was stupid ... It was just that there didn't seem to be a lot to say that someone wasn't already saying.

Man needs bread and hyacinths: one to feed the body, and one to feed the soul.

I entered a poem in a poetry contest around 1987, and the poem won and I received $1,000 for it. That made me realize that maybe what I was writing was worth reading to people. After that, for some reason, I turned to novels and I've written mainly novels ever since.

Read a lot, live your life, and listen and watch, so that your mind fills up with millions of images.