I tell beginning readers to read a lot and write a lot. If you want to write a book, find a subject that's really worth the time and effort you'll put in.

Things were here before you and will be here after you're gone. The geographic features, especially, give you a sense of your own place in the world and in time

At first, I spend about four hours a day writing. Toward the end of a book, I spend up to 16 hours a day on it, because all I want to do is make it good and get it done.

I want my prose to be as clear as a pane of glass.

The goofiness of radicals thinking they have to dress in Guatemalan peasant clothes. The poor don't want you to look like them. They want you to dress in a suit and go get them food and water. Comma.

The only real nation is humanity

The problem is fundamental... It is as if a secret committee, now lost to history, has made a study of children and, having figured out what the greatest number were least disposed to declared that all of them should do it.