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

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

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.

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 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.

The knowledge of God is a sacred pursuit.

The most coward person is the one who uses religion to win an argument.

How boring these emotions are that we're caught in and can't get free of, no matter how much we want to.

Look about you. Take hold of the things that are here. Let them talk to you. You learn to talk to them.

The intelligence community, for the most part, has no accountability at all; to the Congress, to us the American people, and so they feel that they above the law.

Words can be used for venal purposes. Words are incredible sources of propaganda and can cause terrible havoc.

My mom is a very warm, typical sort of Jewish-mother type. And my dad has a somewhat, um, different personality.

Dwelling-place and food are useful for life but give it no significance: the immediate goals of the housekeeper are only means, not true ends.

Im very easy going and low maintenance when it comes to my hair.

Gratitude to God makes even a temporal blessing a taste of heaven.