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

Readers no longer need novelists to tell us what it's like to cross the world on a ship or fight a war. In the twenty-first century, we get that information in other ways. The thing that's still a mystery to us is the human heart. What we want is to understand people, what they're doing, and why they're doing it.

All great popular literature today one day will be seen as great literature and will no longer be seen as popular literature.

We born dyin'...But you ask a man an' he talk like he gonna live forevah.

Better to listen to the gospel than to a mortal leader.

All writing is that structure of revelation. There's something you want to find out. If you know everything up front in the beginning, you really don't need to read further if there's nothing else to find out.

When you deal with a person who's experiencing dementia, you can see where they're struggling with knowledge. You can see what they forget completely, what they forget but they know what they once knew. You can tell how they're trying to remember.