I don't think I could write about someone I didn't feel some sympathy for.

...it just goes to show you can't leave anything behind. You bring it all with you, whether you want to or not.

I despise this weakness in myself - this endless one-sided conversation that takes the place of action.

Whenever I pick up a book I think, "Tell me something I don't know."

If writers stuck to firsthand experience, novels would be pretty limited.

Just because we think of wolves (or the wilderness, or another race) as wild and fierce, doesn't mean there isn't another side to them.

I love research, and in fact it's liberating because you have to create your own world. No one can say "I've just got back from the 1860s, and you got it wrong." Anyway, it's fiction.