Tim O'Brien's book about Vietnam, 'The Things They Carried', has won every award, is studied in college and is considered to be definitive. But it's fiction.

But this too is true: stories can save us.

Every time I get through the work on a book of nonfiction, I say I'll never do it again; it takes so much out of you.

When I was on the bestseller list with the first book, everyone who knows me knows that every week it continued to be on the list was a very dark week for me. Everyone knows that all I wanted was to be off that list.

I think almost every writer in the world would hope that books would be always talked about with respect and civility and depth and seriousness.

I'm interested in the human impact of the giant foot of misplaced government. After all, we encounter it every day.