I've lived out West some... I've always liked the High Plains areas - eastern Colorado, eastern Wyoming, western Nebraska.

Ask her what she craved, and she'd get a little frantic about things like books, the woods, music. Plants and the seasons. Also freedom.

We are not strong enough to stand up against endless grief, And yet pain is the constant drone of life. So if we are to have any happiness at all, it is only in the passing instant.

She always carried a book, though, in case she needed to read a few pages to avoid unwanted conversation.

Claim your space. Draw a circle of light around it. Push back against the dark. Don't just survive. Celebrate.

Thinking: this journey will be the axle of my life.

All I can say is that we are mistaken to gouge such a deep rift in history that the things old men and old women know have become so useless as to be not worth passing on to grandchildren.

Well, I'm a slow writer. For me, a good day is a page, maybe a page and a half. I'd love to be more efficient, but I am not.

I had never taken creative writing classes. Hadn't even considered it.

A lizard in the spring - hear his darling sing. A bird with wings to fly - go back to his darling weep and moan till he dies. A mole in the ground - root a mountain down.

He tried to name which of the deadly seven might apply, and when he failed he decided to append an eighth, regret.

A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty.

I don't want to wake up and find out it was all a dream.

Education will turn mirrors into windows but it is revelation that will turn cowards into heros

I think a handwritten letter - a lot of guys don't realize what that means. It's those little romantic touches that tell a lady, "I like a lot of people, but you have a special place in my heart."

You choose sin. You practice sin.

I find that I sent wolves not shepherds to govern Ireland, for they have left me nothing but ashes and carcasses to reign over!

Agents are essential, because publishers will not read unsolicited manuscripts.

The triumph of writing fiction is that by doing so, writers can build a more ideal world in themselves.

Failure is... the highway to success.

I was born in 1970 in Illinois, but all the life I remember I've spent in Chapel Hill, N.C.