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.

Curing yourself of obsessive compulsive disorder by going to a strip club is pretty strange.

What interests me is trying to catch the reflection of the human being on the page. I'm interested in how ordinary people live their lives

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

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

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

among a coward's weapons, cynicism is the nastiest of all