I love the mystery, the reconstruction of history, and the way past and future define each other.

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.

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.

If time were to take on human form, would she be your taskmaster or freedom fighter?

If a man hasn’t found something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.

You can never be free as long as you have an ego to defend.

Hemingway said the only way to write about a place is to leave it.

Making music, creating lyrics comes very naturally to me.

I also made a lot of really great friends on that show [the Voice], so that's one of the most important things that I've taken out of that experience.

Love is like linen, often changed, the sweeter.

Anyone can be rich in promises.

Performing in a live theater is absolutely unbeatable. It is something I have done my entire life and have a gift, it seems, for sharing thoughts live.

If it can be dreamed, it can be done.