...crushed between the fears of going forward and the dread of going back.

There's solace in the thought that I will never finish missing her.

There is no remedy for death--or birth--except to hug the spaces in between. Live loud. Live wide. Live tall.

To ask a novelist to talk about his novels is like asking somebody to cook about their dancing.

These are the stories that we tell ourselves and only ourselves, and they are better left unshared.

Secrets are like pregnancies hereabouts. You can hide them for a while but then they will start screaming.

Try pitching a story of happiness to your editors and their toes are going to curl up.

Retiring from writing is not to retire from life, but retiring from writing is to avoid the inevitable bitterness which a writing career is bound to deliver as its end product, in almost every case.

My father had osteomyelitis-his left arm was withered between his elbow and his shoulder ... . But the amputation of a Stone Age man called Leaf, a stoneworker, does not relate to my father at all.

I felt that, in some ways, my novels lacked heart because of the distance between me and the subject matter. But no one wants to read a book based on good health, a happy upbringing, a long marriage.

Take decision each single time to ascertain that you are getting the best every time.

Are you who I think you are?

And then I bought my own horse, which I had until it died.

These girls wouldn't let just anybody spew on their vital parts, they wanted a guy from a group with a big hit song on the charts.

The end of secrecy would be the end of the novel - especially the English novel. The English novel requires social secrecy, personal secrecy.

If language was given to men to conceal their thoughts, then gesture's purpose was to disclose them.

Have you ever noticed how many men in the Bible failed in the second half of life? Our enemy is so cunning that he will wait forty or even fifty years to set a trap.

I used to like studying a lot.

I had never said, 'dad, I love you'.

I had a job on a newspaper in Wisconsin, and I started off as most reporters did back then: writing obits and free ad giveaways.