In order to go on with our lives, we are always capable of making the ominous into the merely strange.

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

I wrote a novel about the combat experiences I didn't have in Vietnam.

The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia

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

I usually write about ordinary people and ordinary things, but Paul Farmer is the least ordinary person I've ever met... He's the leader of a small group of people who hope to cure a sick world, and I hope my book can help in some small way.

Writing is revision. All prose responds to work.