I write on a visual canvas, 'seeing' a scene in my thoughts before translating it into language, so I'm a visual junkie.

What thrills me about trains is not their size or their equipment but the fact that they are moving, that they embody a connection between unseen places.

I was a very, very old child. Sometimes you meet a child who seems more like an adult. I think I was that type of child because I had a nearly fatal kidney disease when I was 9 years old.

You think you know someone by looking at his face but what can one face say about the thousand thoughts behind those eyes.

I don't remember being a child, and that's why I think I'm so child-like now in my unending curiosity and approach to life.

I think what you can’t see is always what you should be frightened of.

Asking anyone what she or he is reading is a necessary part of conversation, exchanging news. So I take recommendations from friends - and I always pass along a book I've loved.

...to make art is to realize another's sadness within, realize the hidden sadness in other people's lives, to feel sad with and for a stranger.

I'm fascinated by the narrative of geology, and I'm a veritable pack rat of a collector on the road. I keep a rock hammer in my car.

Because music is a language unto itself, when I'm writing, I need silence. I need to hear the music and the rhythms of the words inside my thoughts.

I take the world very personally. I take history personally; I want to place myself in the larger context.

Life has been full of evil, and if you don't start asking the right questions, the evil is going to be the end of you.

When we carry out our "religious duties" we are like people digging channels in a waterless land, in order that when at last water comes, it may find them ready.

My dad is very successful in his business. He's always been big in having hobbies and having little ways to get away. He always made time for hunting and fishing. He always encouraged me to do it.

When you start writing the magic comes when the characters seem to take on a life of their own and write the words for themselves.

Changing writing styles is like an actor taking on a different part.

Lack of judgement doesn't mean that you don't see what is or is not. It simply means that you realize that everyone is constantly changing - everyone is made up of conscioussness.

Passion is like waves; it comes and goes. Compassion is the constant flow.

You don't have to do everything from scratch. Nobody wants to make puff pastry!

The future doesn't frighten me, even if it threatens to be full of other difficulties.

A politician is required to listen to humbug, talk humbug, condone humbug. The most we can hope for is that we don't actually believe it.