A good book is a good book, and there are a lot of different ways to approach writing or reading one.

A novel is a way to rethink and rewrite and re-envision the past, and also a way to speak to people who haven't been born yet about what we think about right now.

I think that novels are one of the best means that we have to communicate both with the past and with the future.

A lot of people have come up after Brookland and asked, "What happens to her at the end of the novel?" and I will very politely say, well, here are the two possibilities.

Trying to talk through and figure out new answers really helps me figure out more about what I'm doing - and what we're all doing.

Historical fiction is a collaboration between the time in which it's written and the time that it's writing about and the far future, when we don't know what people are going to think about yet.

Nobody thinks that there were never mechanical horses in the world. Everybody knows that there aren't really golems.

Maybe one of the reasons that I don't ever experience myself as having writer's block is I don't feel that I need to be producing every minute of every day.

If I don't write every day for one week or even, frankly, one year, I don't really think too much about that.

It would have been a hard year if I'd spent it berating myself for not working on the book.

I think that we're all always just working on finding how that balance functions for us, given today's circumstances.

Groans that words cannot express are often prayers that God cannot refuse.

There is great power in our words, because theyare thoughts to which we have given additional energy by speaking them aloud so another person can know them.

The weariest night the longest day sooner or later must perforce come to an end.

A Black Belt under the Nogueira Brothers is like saying I got a free toy in my happy meal

It took three years to put Shakespeare's words together, there were a lot of words to be studied and a lot of words to be sorted out, and it proved to be a major project.

Isn't there any statute of limitation in things spiritual? I don't believe any large mind dwells on its sins, any more than on its virtues!

The Libertarian position on the freedom of speech is a strong support of freedom of speech, and we oppose government intervention in controlling what is or is not moral.

The UK is not going to leave the European Union. Of course not. We are inextricably wound up with Europe. In terms of culture, history and geography, we are a European nation.

I really bridled when Parks And Rec became popular and woodworking publications wanted me to do stuff with them.

I've never abandoned the novel.