Mother could go for one year without food, but not one day without her lip sticks.
This is how moths speak to each other. They tell their love across the fields by scent. There is no mouth, the wrong words are impossible, either a mate is there or he is not, and if so the pair will find each other in the dark.
No reporter worth his buttons will let the facts intrude on a good story.
Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.
What we end up calling history is a kind of knife, slicing down through time. A few people are hard enough to bend its edge. But most won’t even stand close to the blade. I’m one of those. We don’t bend anything.
You know reviewers, they are the wind in their own sails.
Lies are infinite in number, and the truth so small and singular.
I don’t bring expectations to any of my books. I don’t tell people what to do. I want to invite them in.
Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.
I know I’m a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.
I live in a rural part of Virginia surrounded by farms and farmers.
After ‘The Poisonwood Bible’ was published, several people believed that my parents were missionaries, which could not be further from the truth.
I never think that anything I’m writing is bluntly political in any way. I’m not going for commentary.
I suppose that is my central obsession. What we owe to society, what we owe to ourselves.
I do my best work if I think about what it is I have to offer.
As a biologist, I can’t think of myself as anything but an animal among animals and plant.
It takes some courage to write fiction about politically controversial topics. The dread is you’ll be labeled a political writer.
What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.
Small change, small wonders – these are the currency of my endurance and ultimately of my life.
Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.