When I went to college I took a creative writing class and decided in a week to be a writer.

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.

You must always conduct your business with a clear mind, free of personal issues. Until you learn this simple fact, you'll never get anything out of life. -Moses Luzzatto

Each morning sees some task begun Each evening sees it close. Something attempted something done Has earned a night's repose.

Happiness is a Swedish sunset it is there for all but most of us look the other way and lose it.

A lot of my life has involved with helping create cultures that have as their basis this vision of the sharing, the partaking of a certain ethos together.

Tantric Zen is for someone who is really broad-minded. It is Bodhidharma's Zen, your Zen, my Zen. Which doesn't mean I have a problem with Japanese Zen. Most Japanese Zen is minding your p's and q's.

The death of my father is probably the biggest thing that I ever faced. Daddy and I were best friends.

Happiness is a tiger in your tank and a pussycat in your back seat.

Intelligence will become more and more collective; innovation and order will become more and more bottom-up.

With sports, you get the results back right away. With life, it's not always so black and white.

Maybe I just stay in relationships for too long and then they get really dramatic.