The heart makes dreams seem like ideas..

Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks redden….

When I left Iowa, I definitely never wanted to stand in front of a group of academics again and see if they approved of me. I made up my mind to take….

There's an overlap between social-realist fiction and crime fiction - a sweet spot there..

He unscrewed the lid, set it on the dash, snorted from the bottle twice, banged the steering wheel, and said, 'You got to be ready to die every day -….

Gail had a baby named Ned who was four months old, and a new look of baffled hurt, a left-behind sadness, like she saw that the great world kept spin….

For a long time, I thought you could remain isolated and survive, and I didn't want to change that. But over the last three or four books, I've becom….

Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered..

Fading light buttered the ridges until shadows licked them clean and they were lost to nightfall..

It's not always to the benefit of the story to have it so preordained..

But I've been at writing long enough now to know that every three or four books I have to start a new direction..

This is how sudden things happened that haunted forever..

When I started to be a writer, I was not going to run the risk of boring you..

I felt like a number of things in me as a writer just clicked..

I'm not one of these people who thinks everyone born into privilege should wear sack cloth and ashes. But it's something I wrestle with. I know a lot….

Pine trees with low limbs spread over fresh snow made a stronger vault for the spirit than pews and pulpits ever could..

I, myself, often wished to be spared the expectation of better days ahead or such..

A person has to show some spirit -- fate just about never shines on chickenshits..

I have a book in the pipeline of short stories. You want to hear an agent scream, say 'I'm thinking about doing a collection of short stories set in ….

The opening novel of the 'Bayou Trilogy' was the first one I finished..

I didn't really expect to be coming to the Oscars..