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.

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.

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

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.

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.

In my ArtI have butone fear:that we willfail to befearless.

I'm very aware we are the first generation ever to have such incredible opportunities to express ourselves publicly to a worldwide audience.

I know I don't need him, but I think I want him.

I wouldn't touch a superlative again with an umbrella.

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

A family is a family not because of gender but because of values, like commitment, trust and love.

London is a small place, and it is very incestuous. People know where you live. Everybody is sort of on top of each other.

I'd take pasta over skinny any day. More importantly, I'd take health over looks.

My time in the World Rally Championship has been a useful stage in my career, but I can't deny the fact that my hunger for F1 has recently become overwhelming.

Nobody really lives in the present.