Even though I may not intend it when I set out to write the book, these places just emerge as major players in what I'm doing, almost as if they are insisting on it.

When it comes time to sit down and write the next book, you're deathly afraid that you're not up to the task. That was certainly the case with me after Snow Falling on Cedars.

The status quo was rote memorization and recitation in classrooms thronged with passive children who were sternly disciplined when they expressed individual needs.

My father is a practicing criminal law attorney in the Seattle area.

At one level you're condemned to the voice you have. But within those confines, you have a certain amount of freedom to range among your possible voices.

There are things in this universe that we cannot control, and then there are the things we can. . . . Let fate, coincidence, and accident conspire; human beings must act on reason.

What some people interpret as brooding melancholy is serenity. I don't feel required to grasp all the time.

accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart.

There's a certain nostalgia and romance in a place you left.

It's a brooding melancholy that haunts me.

I'm interested in themes that endure from generation to generation.

Either you create million excuses or you create million rupees. But you cannot create both.

Call me an over anxious, middle-class mum, but my eight-and-a-half-year old son looks very much, to me, like he's headed for a life of crime.

You should do whatever language you feel is the perfect language for you to sing in and then try to strive to do the best.

Pain is easy to write. In pain we're all happily individual. But what can one write about happiness?

Any leader who asks the right questions of the right people has the potential to discover and develop great ideas.

I run a couple of newspapers. What do you do?

As an actor you accept that you have to publicise what you do, but as for the whole personal life thing that people sometimes choose, no, that's not for me.

To me, creatively challenging myself is my version of owning the Nets.

You're beautiful in battle. ... Like an avenging angel come to deliver the justice of heaven." "Funny. That is kind of why I'm here." "Angels fall, Rose.

We must sow the seed, not hoard it.