“I can't believe how many students don't read. They want to be writers, but they haven't read anything at all. They have looked at book covers, which usually allows them enough expertise to sneer, but they haven't read the books. How many young poets "don't like" poetry? How many fiction writers don't know Lehane from Nevada Barr?”

“This is how Heaven works. They're practical. We are always looking for rays of light. For lightning bolts or burning bushes. But God is a worker, like us. He made the world — He didn't hire poor Indios to build it for him! God has worker's hands. Just remember — angels carry no harps. Angels carry hammers.”

“Even if, at the moment, you can't sit down and do the gruntwork of stringing verbs and nouns together, you are writing. It is a way of seeing, a way of being. The world is not only the world, but your personal filing cabinet. You lodge details of the world in your sparkling nerve-library that spirals through your brain and coils down your arms and legs, collects in your belly and your sex. You write, even if you can't always "write." However, writers write. Active, not passive.”

“The world looked to them like a great roll of butcher paper unfurled on a table.”

“...There was nothing one could do when love came. It was fast, and it was strong, and if it were not good, then surely God would not have allowed it such power.”

“Cruz made the sign of the cross over them. He hefted his rifle onto his shoulder and walked away. His warriors followed, blessed by the Lord, reconciled, holy in this day He had made, and ready to shoot.”

“There are too many books I haven't read, too many places I haven't seen, too many memories I haven't kept long enough”