People ask me when I start one of these projects, what is your theme? I haven’t the faintest idea. That’s why you’re writing the book, it seems to me, to find out. To me, it’s a journey. It’s an adventure. It’s traveling in a country you’ve never been in and everything is going to be new, and because of that, vivid. And don’t make up your mind too soon. Let it be an experience.

People ask me when I start one of these projects, what is your theme? I haven’t the faintest idea. That’s why you’re writing the book, it seems to me, to find out. To me, it’s a journey. It’s an adventure. It’s traveling in a country you’ve never been in and everything is going to be new, and because of that, vivid. And don’t make up your mind too soon. Let it be an experience.

Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard."

(Interview with NEH chairman Bruce Cole, Humanities, July/Aug. 2002, Vol. 23/No. 4)

I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber.

There's an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing.

In time I began to understand that it's when you start writing that you really find out what you don't know and need to know.