I always try to make the setting fit the story I have in mind.

- Tony Hillerman

You write for two people, yourself and your audience, who are usually better educated and at least as smart.

- Tony Hillerman

An author knows his landscape best; he can stand around, smell the wind, get a feel for his place.

- Tony Hillerman

A writer is like a bag lady going through life with a sack and a pointed stick collecting stuff.

- Tony Hillerman

I know what I write about seems exotic to a lot of people, but not for me. I pulled up to an old trading post and saw a few elderly Navajos sitting o…

- Tony Hillerman

Everything is connected. The wing of the corn beetle affects the direction of the wind, the way the sand drifts, the way the light reflects into the …

- Tony Hillerman

The highest praise a writer can give another is to say he wishes he had written his book. I wish I had written Forty Words for Sorrow. Giles Blunt ha…

- Tony Hillerman

The first Chapter Law is, "Don't spend much time on it. You're going to have to rewrite it."

- Tony Hillerman

IF you are not for yourself, who will be for you? If you are only for yourself, what are you? If not now, when?

- Tony Hillerman