“It is harrowing for me to try to teach 20-year-old students, who earnestly want to improve their writing. The best I can think to tell them is: Quit smoking, and observe posted speed limits. This will improve your odds of getting old enough to be wise.”

Literature is one of the few kinds of writing in the world that does not tell you what to buy, want, see, be, or believe. It’s more like conversation, raising new questions and inspiring you to answer them for yourself.

The happiest people are the ones with the most community.

She kept swimming out into life because she hadn’t yet found a rock to stand on.

Prayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction.

If you want sweet dreams, you’ve got to live a sweet life.

That was when we smelled the rain. It was so strong it seemed like more than just a smell. When we stretched out our hands we could practically feel it rising up from the ground. I don’t know how a person could ever describe that scent.

You never knew which split second might be the zigzag bolt dividing all that went before from the everything that comes next.

I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence.

We’re surrounded by mandates, and I believe that literature should be mandate-free. I feel very strongly about that.

Does a man become a revolutionary out of the belief he’s entitled to joy rather than submission?

I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains don’t move. They only look changed when you look down on them from great height.

I know I’m a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.

Now I’m starting to think he wasn’t supposed to be my whole life, he was just this doorway to me.

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

Households that have lost the soul of cooking from their routines may not know what they are missing: the song of a stir-fry sizzle, the small talk of clinking measuring spoons, the yeasty scent of rising dough, the painting of flavors onto a pizza before it slides into the oven.

Parenting is something that happens mostly while you’re thinking of something else.