My interest is always to get as deeply as I can into the minds and spirits of the characters and let the readers empathize or judge as they will.

It is a negative sort of achievement, she thinks, to have spent a life warding something off.

Only the luckless, the petty or the deranged [end] up in court.

Discovery is the joy.

As I see it, my job as a writer isn't to judge, but to take a reader as far inside as I can and let them dwell there.

Sound systems are what turn cars into escape vehicles, even if you've got nowhere to go.

...I did what most kids do when their world feels destroyed. I tried to care less about what remained...It was untrue, of course.

...I did what most kids do when their world feels destroyed. I tried to care less about what remained...This was untrue, of course.

It struck me then, for the first time, how unethical anxiety is, how it voids the reality of other people by conscripting them as palliatives for your own fear.

Never embrace a version of the gospel that doesn't require you to do life with someone who isn't like you.

If you don’t want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won’t have to work.

The wind likes making jokes!

A name? Oh, Jesus Christ. Ah, God, I've been called by a million names all my life. I don't want a name. I'm better off with a grunt or a groan for a name.

Memory feeds a culture, nourishes hope and makes a human, human.

I love lipbalms in general; they're very important!

I find it hard to take rock groups very seriously or treat them with respect. There is something absurd about these gloomy young men getting together and banging away.

On the other hand, I'm drawn to top hats, and spats, and mustaches. I haven't read a Missed Connection yet with someone wearing a monocle, but rest assured I'll snap it up if I do.

The great wars of the 20th Century made it into the worst Century ever.

I enlisted when I was a boy. The Navy looked after me like my mother. It fed me, took care of me and gave me wonderful opportunities.