An author knows his landscape best; he can stand around, smell the wind, get a feel for his place.

The essays in The Great Taos Bank Robbery were my project to win a Master of Arts degree in English when I quit being a newspaper editor and went back to college.

From where we stand the rain seems random. If we could stand somewhere else, we would see the order in it.

The first Chapter Law is, "Don't spend much time on it. You're going to have to rewrite it."

Having grown up in Oklahoma when it was one of the last states which prohibited liquor, I grew up with War On Drugs, where every teenager knew who the bootleggers were

A writer is like a bag lady going through life with a sack and a pointed stick collecting stuff.

I know what I write about seems exotic to a lot of people, but not for me. I pulled up to an old trading post and saw a few elderly Navajos sitting on a bench. I felt right at home.

IF you are not for yourself, who will be for you? If you are only for yourself, what are you? If not now, when?

Thoughts, and words that spring from them, bend the individual's reality. To speak of death is to invite it. To think of sorrow is to produce it.

I always try to make the setting fit the story I have in mind.

I try to make my books reflect humanity as I see it.

Words and statements work both ways - to build or destroy.

We have the ability to write the blueprint for our own goals, and decide how we want to pursue them. If we allow others to do it for us, we won’t achieve our full potential to be the best we can be.

It made our presence in the world meaningful

We must think ourselves empty when coming to the text of scripture and read ourselves full.

Leadership is never given on a silver platter, one has to earn it.

If there's something as good as [him] in my life, I'm going to pay for it.

The cultivation of trees is the cultivation of the good, the beautiful and the ennobling in man.

Speak, Lord”; make time to listen. Chastening is more than a means of discipline, it is meant to get me to the place of saying, “Speak, Lord.”

There's only so much you can do with an attorney on a show that's about New York policemen.

When you work for something, you appreciate it more. So what are y'all going to do with all the opportunities you inherited that you didn't have to work for?