The status quo was rote memorization and recitation in classrooms thronged with passive children who were sternly disciplined when they expressed individual needs.

When it comes time to sit down and write the next book, you're deathly afraid that you're not up to the task. That was certainly the case with me after Snow Falling on Cedars.

My father is a practicing criminal law attorney in the Seattle area.

At one level you're condemned to the voice you have. But within those confines, you have a certain amount of freedom to range among your possible voices.

There are things in this universe that we cannot control, and then there are the things we can. . . . Let fate, coincidence, and accident conspire; human beings must act on reason.

What some people interpret as brooding melancholy is serenity. I don't feel required to grasp all the time.

accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart.

There's a certain nostalgia and romance in a place you left.

It's a brooding melancholy that haunts me.

I'm interested in themes that endure from generation to generation.

I think you have an obligation to share what you know as a writer.

Write what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?

It is but a truism that labor is most productive where its wages are largest. Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor the world over.

The golden age has not passed it lies in the future.

I was completely unhealthy, obese, so I committed to running three miles every morning for six months and following a strict diet, and 100 pounds came off.

Repentance isn't only sorrow for past sins, it's also a determination to now do the will of God as He reveals it to us

You stand next to the sea and you're in touch with all your longings and all your losses.

Pleasure is the beginning and the end of living happily.

I am, and always will be, a blues guitarist.

If the length of your life is much shorter than the story of your life, this means that you have lived your life so fully!

Hip-hop is too young to put a definition on it