My job is writing for people to enjoy and then writing about a broader and a deeper world.

Our collective freedom... depends on our ability to defend the rights of others.

Literature is the adventure. It's the story, it's the fight, it's people falling in love, it's people with deep personality disorders who succeed anyway beyond themselves. That's what great literature is.

The older you get the more you live in the past

Losing my parents really set me adrift in more ways than one. It's not just losing them. It's losing the possibility of family.

A lot of people... kind of make heroes that are separate from us, people who are, you know, like... John Wayne and Errol Flynn and, you know, Denzel Washington... people who are different, who are larger than life.

Your book grows. The early part of your book is growing still while you are writing the later part of your book.