There's always a part of your nation's history that you haven't been told that... has a powerful impact on how you yourself may behave and may believe.

Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.

The important thing isn't the house. It's the ability to make it. You carry that in your brains and in your hands, wherever you go... It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.

What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive.

Nonfiction requires enormous discipline. You construct the terms of your story, and then you stick to them.

I live in a rural part of Virginia surrounded by farms and farmers.