IF you are not for yourself, who will be for you? If you are only for yourself, what are you? If not now, when?

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.

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.

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.

Il me semble que je serais toujours bien la ou je ne suis pas.It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not.

If I never shed a tear or wondered what happened to someone I actually loved, what makes you believe I'd think twice about you, someone I never even cared for?

As you release a belief that doesn’t serve you, you want to lock in a new belief that is powerful.

Once a federal law or policy is in place it is more difficult to kill than a vampire.

If you're lucky as you get older, you respect the craft and it becomes a skill.

The Beginning of Survival is my best album. I am very proud of it, and I am surprised at it, too. I thought some of Travelogue was a little heavy, but I don't think this is heavy.

This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren't.

There are some actors who can only play themselves, but good actors must really be separated from the people they play.

All the persecutors declare against each other mortal war, while the philosopher, oppressed by them all, contents himself with pitying them.

He's a trellis for varicose veins.