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

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.

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

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.

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.

Flowers for Algernon again? she asks. Doesn't that book always make you cry?One day it won't, I say. I want to be sure to be reading it on that day.

Life is meaningless, when we take a life we take nothing of value.

We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion just as effectively as by bombs.

So I've broadened the fitness concept to make it one of moderation and balance.

My style was always to spread out rather than to move up.

In the American colonies, the main problem of liberty has been solved, demonstrated and practiced in such a manner as not to leave much to be said by European institutions.

My wife had her drivers’ test the other day. She got 8 out of 10. The other 2 guys jumped clear.

Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That's not the place to become discouraged.

I haven't gotten fired from many jobs, but you finish a job and nine times out of ten you're just unemployed and you don't know where the next one is. And that does get old. It's stressful.

Refuse to allow yourself to have low expectations about what you're capable of creating