“My workplace is wherever I'm making something, which could be in a field in gold country, or in an abandoned warehouse on a military base.”

“Fiction, I believed, was the transmutation of experiential dross into linguistic gold. Fiction meant taking up whatever the world had abandoned by the road and making something beautiful out of it.”

“Funny how the U.S. sends in the military to fight “terrorists” in any country which has resources it wants....”

“My goal is this: always to put myself in the place in which I am best able to serve, wherever my gifts and qualities find the best soil to grow, the widest field of action. There is no other goal.”

“Country is based on folk music, which has been around for centuries—” “So has the plague.”

“I remember once walking out hand in hand with a boy I knew, and it was summer, and suddenly before us was a field of gold. Gold as far as you could see. We knew we'd be rich forever. We filled our pockets and our hair. We were rolled in gold. We ran through the field laughing and our legs and feet were coated in yellow dust, so that we were like golden statues or golden gods. He kissed my feet, the boy I was with, and when he smiled, he had a gold tooth.It was only a field of buttercups, but we were young.”