A novel that features real people is complicated, but in the end, that extra challenge is all for the good.

How we fall into grace. You can't work or earn your way into it. You just fall. It lies below, it lies beyond. It comes to you, unbidden.

My life, I realize suddenly, is July. Childhood is June, and old age is August, but here it is, July, and my life, this year, is July inside of July.

Nothing will get you into trouble so deep or as sad as faith.

I've heard it said that when you die you enter a room of bright light, and that you can smell bread baking just around the corner.

The mountains have always been here, and in them, the bears.

Fiction is harder for me than nonfiction - more gratifying, as a result, when it succeeds.

Ive lost much of my heart and the spark or fire that once created, or produced, the art of fiction.

When you sign on to be an activist in northwest Montana, people in the grocery store will avoid eye contact, particularly if they're hanging out with outspoken opponents to your views.

Fit in where you don't: make your own space..be different..don't give in. Exist somewhere you're not suppose to, or where you don't want to. Be your own men; do what you want, and don't hurt anybdoy

To not pursue the thing one wants would be a waste of one's life.

How people treat you is their karma

And when I retired, trust me, not only did Nolan Ryan, but the entire Ryan family had withdrawals from baseball. And it was tough.

The arc of the moral universe may bend towards justice, but it doesn't bend on its own.

We knew that there was a certain kind of interest in Whale among a genre crowd.

When even despair ceases to serve any creative purpose, then surely we are justified in suicide.

I never say who I'm going to vote for, I never tell.

In executing the duties of my present important station, I can promise nothing but purity of intentions, and, in carrying these into effect, fidelity and diligence.

Everyone I know feels harassed by email which has invaded their waking and sleeping hours.

People are adamant learning is not just looking at a Google page. But it is. Learning is looking at Google pages. What is wrong with that?