With my family background - my parents were both activists - writing about culture and politics came naturally.

Each source that I read, I would look through the bibliography and the footnotes, and use that as a map for the next thing I would read.

Every now and then, you find a book that feels like it was keyed to your DNA.

Everyone would tell me they couldn't identify with sexual abuse. No one says they can't identify with the tales of the Greek gods and goddesses because they don't live on Mt. Olympus.

Writers aren't born, they're made - from practice, reading, and a lot of caffeine.

I have lived for a long time inside a series of coincidences that most people would find implausible in a novel.

PhD, MFA, self-taught - the only things you must have to become a writer are the stamina to continue and a wily, cagey heart in the face of extremity, failure, and success.

Whenever people say a coincidence in a novel is implausible, I think, Do I have a story for you.

I had a naiveté that I would remember the things that I had written already, but I was getting lost in the forest of my own ideas and having to find my way out.

The myth works to make the very real things people don't want to look at visible for them.

As I get ready to buy a new computer, I'm stunned at all the many micro drafts, of different chapters and scenes and whatnot, that litter the hard drive.

Sometimes you can cattle rope your heart and sometimes you can't, is all.

From flophouse bedTo poorhouse bread, all outhouse sorrow:I thee wed.

Even a small amount of unplanned downtime can effect a company’s profitability and reputation.

Liberals want the family destroyed, they want religion destroned, because then you have loyalty directly to the state.

I don't believe in collective guilt, but I do believe in collective responsibility.

There is no religion in fact that I know that encourages or propagates violence in that its adherents should carry out.

LeBron James is the best player, hands down. He is easily moving into the territory of one of the best players of all time and may end up being the best player of all time.

The difficulty with humorists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don't; whichever seems likelier to win an effect.

I don't like green Christmases. They're not green—they're just nasty faded browns and grays.

It’s the freedom of the children of God. Such people can connect with everybody. They don’t feel the need to eliminate anybody.