I got hooked on TV westerns back in the early sixties when I was about five, mostly because my brother was addicted to them and wouldn't let me watch anything else.

It took me ten years to write The Night Journal, so that was a big ordeal.

I love Austin. It's great here. I don't mind the heat.

I grew up thirty miles down the highway in San Marcos, and I've still got family there, so I guess I'm pretty well rooted.

I love the writers in Austin. We stick together. We all like each other and go to each other's book signings in case no one else shows up.

When Larry Wright won the Pulitzer for The Looming Tower we all strutted around for weeks, until some sourpuss among us noted that it was actually Larry, and not the rest of us, who won the prize.

I'd be a dope to compare my writing with Wallace Stegner's, but that book probably influenced me in ways I didn't even realize while I was writing The Night Journal.

It seems like the Western genre has crept out of its casings during the last few years, and expanded to include books and movies we wouldn't originally have thought of as westerns.

The defining aspects of westerns are still pretty much in place - namely landscape and conflict. In other books the conflict can be internal, but in westerns it usually plays out on a big stage.

I think when you're a writer most of what you read influences you. The rhythms get into your head.

In middle school I wrote a paper on Hemingway and none of the sentences had more than five words.

Who has chosen this kind world for us and why?

If your master demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty.

He is a goal scorer, not a natural born one - not yet. That takes time.

Compared to the bugs and the spiders and flies, I am an apeman.

From cane reeds, sugar. From a worm's cocoon, silk. Be patient if you can, and from sour grapes will come something sweet.

There are two kinds of people in this world: Michael Jackson fans and losers.

It would be nice if at least 1/3 of the people in Korea think that I'm modest.

Financial regulatory reform is one of the top legislative priorities of the Obama Administration.

I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it, to support its Constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies.

Battles are not won by strength alone!