Although I wasnt able to get a visa for Vietnam, I was able to talk with swift boat veterans to get a feel for the time and place, and I visited a tropical prison in the Philippines to get a sense of what a Vietnamese prison might have been like.

An author knows his landscape best; he can stand around, smell the wind, get a feel for his place.

The first Chapter Law is, "Don't spend much time on it. You're going to have to rewrite it."

IF you are not for yourself, who will be for you? If you are only for yourself, what are you? If not now, when?

The highest praise a writer can give another is to say he wishes he had written his book. I wish I had written Forty Words for Sorrow. Giles Blunt has a tremendous talent. If you miss Forty Words for Sorrow, you'll miss one of best novels of 2001.

Thoughts, and words that spring from them, bend the individual's reality. To speak of death is to invite it. To think of sorrow is to produce it.

From where we stand the rain seems random. If we could stand somewhere else, we would see the order in it.