You have the feeling that if you get a Pulitzer, you're somehow set for life.

When you're building a character, or at least when I'm building a character, you start saying, 'How am I going to make people like him?'

With most of my books, I'll actually go out and look at the setting. If you describe things carefully, it kind of makes the scene pop.

Nuts don’t come in bunches. Only grapes do.

They don't have a lot of crime in the countryside other than theft. But every once in a while, things turn ugly, and when they turn ugly, they turn very ugly.

Just go outside and look at something and write it down and you'll find it is a very nice piece of writing.

There's something about marriage that is not as intensely romantic or interesting as a couple's first meeting.

I've always been sort of interested in the rural countryside. Things happen out there that are very strange to city dwellers.

Catholics don't scream about Jesus, they scream about the bishop.

Most people who are trying to write kind of sit in their basements and pull it out of their imaginations.

Gonna rain like a cow pissin' on a flat rock" [drugstore clerk to detective Virgil Flowers] Dark of the Moon, p.7

Fundamentally leadership is about change and influencing people to change.

From sunny woof and cloudy weft Fell rain in sheets; so, to myself I hummed these hazard rhymes, and left The learned volume on the shelf.

I am only young once, who cares if I'm a goofball!

How should I know anything about another world when I know so little of this?

Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones There's something in this richness that I hate. I love the look, austere, immaculate, Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.

Once you expose your private life, if you give one little bit, the floodgates are open and everyone's got a free range for you.

Regret isn't good. Every decision one makes in life is made for a reason or another. Whenever something bad happens, I go, 'This is happening for a reason', or, 'This is going to teach me something'.

In order to accomplish something, you must be willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish it.

The most beautiful curve is a rising sales graph.

But, hey I did everything the right way and earned my spot in this game, nothing was given to me.