Women are extremely important shapers of my own life.

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.

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

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.

It seems to me if I were young and in love I should never deem a man of ordinary caliber worthy of my devotion.

A great person is one who affects the mind of their generation.

It's not going to be easy. It's the earth. What creates power in your life is when you perfect your mind, your career, and your associations with others.

Composers don't just sit in a room and write things that are in their heads, they actually listen to a lot of music, pop music, jazz, rock and roll, any combination of music that catches their ear.

If you are asking the wrong question, it doesn't matter how good the answer is, you aren't going to get where you want to go.

A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget.

Great Pompey's shade complains that we are slow, And Scipio's ghost walks unavenged amongst us!

I just try to have a good time, enjoy my family, enjoy my life. I was having a blast when I was poor, and I'm having maybe a little bit more now that I've got something in the bank.

I don't see any possibility of Britain and the U.S. allowing a sovereign independent Iraq; that's almost inconceivable.

I've always been a fan of music. I would say I'm a fan of late '90s to early 2000s rap. That's where I get all my inspiration from.