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

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.

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.

All can I say is that exams are damn pathetic

When you start falling for somebody and you can't stop thinking about when you're going to see them again, I love that. Women are beautiful. They deserve to be cherished and respected.

Baseball hasn't forgotten me. I go to a lot of old-timers games and I haven't lost a thing. I sit in the bullpen and let people throw things at me. Just like old times.

It’s not the advertising - it’s the dog food. Every time anybody has a look at it or has a lick of it, they don’t like it.

The only part that's ever frustrating is just the deadline. If left to my own devices, I'd work for a year on something that doesn't need to be worked on for a year because I enjoy it.

If people were like rain, I was like drizzle and she was a hurricane.

If you survive long enough, you're revered - rather like an old building.

The experience of happiness is a direct means of replenishing life energy and revitalizing the mind.

A person’s never too old for stories. Man and boy, girl and woman, we live for them. - Roland Deschain

Never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never saw even an elemental trait of painting or sculpture.