All those layers of silence upon silence.

When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I’ve read so often that I’ve internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out.

The Little Friend is a long book. It's also completely different from my first novel: different landscape, different characters, different use of language and diction, different approach to story.

Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I consider the time well-spent

It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.

I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.

Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

Criticism at the wrong time, even if it's legitimate criticism, can be seriously damaging and make the writer lose faith in what he's doing. It's the timing that's all-important.

When you say "Yes!" to your dream and do what you truly love to do, you are also transforming the world for the better.

I should have tried getting blown up months ago if that's what it takes to get you to be nice to me.

The FDA has received over a million comments from citizens demanding labeling of GMOs. 90 percent of Americans agree. So, why no labeling?

Gonzo journalism is a style of reporting based on William Faulkner's idea that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism.

As I always say, I do not wish you an easy time, but I wish you that whatever difficulty you may have, you will overcome it.

Without liberals we wouldn't have unions. We wouldn't have environmental protections. We wouldn't have seat belts or birth control or the ACLU! Any of these things!

Grace does not cancel out our responsibility or accountability for the things God has given us to do.

A truly great artist has many talents.

Kitten is in the animal world what the rosebud is in the garden; the one the most beautiful of all young creatures, the other the loveliest of all opening flowers.

The Chinese are like a tank through a corn field, they just keep mowing through it. Senators want sanctions against countries supporting cyberattacks.