War is an option of difficulties.
When I travel, I feel more like a nomad than a tourist.
Childbirth changed my perception of my wife. She was now the bloodied special forces soldier who had fought and risked everything for our family.
I take six or seven years to write really small books. There is a kind of aesthetic of leanness, of brevity.
I am not much of a researcher as a novelist; I write mainly from experience.
I really do believe that people surprise you. And one of the powerful things about novels is that they're about characters, and those characters live their lives.
Many boys, probably most boys, have a first love before they fall in love with a woman. It begins the moment two boys realize they'd die for one another, that each cares more for the other than he does for himself, and it lasts usually until a second love comes on the scene, because most hearts aren't big enough to love more than one person like that.
Through my handicaps, I have found my self, my work, my God.
In America, no other distinction between man and man had ever been known but that of persons in office exercising powers by authority of the laws, and private individuals. Among these last, the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favored one whenever their rights seem to jar.
I have not conceived my mission to be that of a knight-errant wandering everywhere to deliver people from difficult situations. My humble occupation has been to show people how they can solve their own difficulties.
There is something inherently inappropriate about cherishing small ambitions for God.