The fear in my heart was like in one of those dreams where you try to run but you can't do it, you can't run because the fear is an anchor in your chest.

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.

Rest easy and go with the faith you lived with

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

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.

The idea of being productive, the idea of producing many books is going to lead you toward you becoming a better and better writer.

The way I write is this: I write about a thousand words a day, a little bit more. The next morning, I read those thousand words and cursorily edit that. Then I write the next thousand. I do that all the way to the end of the book and then I reread the book quite a few times, editing as go through.