When I select a topic, it's usually a commitment of two to three years of my life

I always want to write something better than the last book.

How could a just God permit great misery? The Haitian peasants answered with a proverb: "Bondye konn bay, men li pa konn separe," in literal translation, "God gives but doesn't share." This meant... God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he's not the one who's supposed to divvy up the loot. That charge was laid upon us.

Many people find it easy to imagine unseen webs of malevolent conspiracy in the world, and they are not always wrong. But there is also an innocence that conspires to hold humanity together, and it is made of people who can never fully know the good that they have done.

The combination of domesticity and wildness - that's a deep expression

When writers stop believing in their own stories, readers tend to sense it.

I've gotta keep life and computers separate, or else I'm gonna go mad.