I often heard about his cases and I often sat in on his trials. In the late 1960s when I was growing up I wanted to be a crusader like him but I didn't want to wear a suit and commute.

My father is a practicing criminal law attorney in the Seattle area.

My book is traditional. It runs counter to the post-modern spirit.

I write because something inner and unconscious forces me to. That is the first compulsion. The second is one of ethical and moral duty. I feel responsible to tell stories that inspire readers to consider more deeply who they are.

Fiction is socially meaningful.

At one level you're condemned to the voice you have. But within those confines, you have a certain amount of freedom to range among your possible voices.

I think of myself as a really happy person.

Don Quixote is one that comes to mind in comparison to mine, in that they both involve journeys undertaken by older men. That is unusual, because generally the hero of a journey story is very young.

I have relaxed into my persona as an author, although I used to fight that.

The real question is: How do you react? What do you do next? Evade responsibilities? Bury yourself in work? What do you do? All three of my novels take up that question, although none gives an answer.

Cities produce in me melancholy or a tension I don't need.

There's a certain nostalgia and romance in a place you left.

I was born in Washington State and have lived here for 42 plus years.

It's a brooding melancholy that haunts me.

What sustains me is to be with my family and to write.

What some people interpret as brooding melancholy is serenity. I don't feel required to grasp all the time.

Hemingway said the only way to write about a place is to leave it.

Time made me change. I gradually woke up to the realization that this is who I am, an author, a public figure, and I couldn't just hide in my study, tapping away at the keyboard and pretend that I didn't have a role to play beyond stringing words together.

I was aware that there is an expectation that writers inevitably falter at this stage, that they fail to live up to the promise of their first successful book, that the next book never pleases the way the prior one did. It simply increased my sense of being challenged.

I think you have an obligation to share what you know as a writer.

I have traveled the entire state and spent a lot of time out of doors. So I have known the landscape of the Columbia Basin for quite a while, and I have had this strong feeling about it for many years.

I'm not an urban person.

I was totally absorbed in the real world, the politics, the history, the news, and I just couldn't find my way into the fictional world... When I finally could return to writing the novel, it was in fits and starts.

I'm interested in themes that endure from generation to generation.

Even though I may not intend it when I set out to write the book, these places just emerge as major players in what I'm doing, almost as if they are insisting on it.

Writing became an obsessive compulsive habit but I had almost no money so I thought about being an urban firefighter and having lots of free time in which to write or becoming an English teacher and thinking about books and writers on a daily basis. That swayed me.

I grew up in Seattle, but I always knew I wanted to leave.

When it comes time to sit down and write the next book, you're deathly afraid that you're not up to the task. That was certainly the case with me after Snow Falling on Cedars.

It doesn't matter who you are, how many awards you've won, how popular you are, or how much critical acclaim you've had.

I often heard about his cases and I often sat in on his trials. In the late 1960s when I was growing up I wanted to be a crusader like him but I didn't want to wear a suit and commute.

I became paralyzed as an artist with writer's block.

Everybody has a world, and that world is completely hidden until we begin to inquire. As soon as we do, that entire world opens to us and yields itself. And you see how full and complex it is.

When I went to college I took a creative writing class and decided in a week to be a writer.

Post-modernism is dead because it didn't address human needs.

Accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart.

If I had to come up with something that just came to me, I think growing up in a small town, I want knowledge. I still think today, knowledge is one of the keys.

I didn't know I was a conservative when it didn't matter to me growing up.

My interests were in fantasy more than comics growing up.

The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt.

Growing up in Hollywood it seemed like every kid was the child of some star. We had no idea that other people would think we were special, because there was no other lifestyle to compare it to.

For me, the great problem growing up in England was that I had a very narrow concept of what God can be, and it was damn close to an old man with a beard.

David and Dad didn't get along too well growing up. I mean we all got along, but it was harder on David, because David wasn't going to be the son that Dad wanted. But now they're like best friends.

My lyrics come from my experiences growing up in life, trying to find out and express who I am. That's basically it. I'm not trying to be a prophet or anything like that. I'm just reflecting on life.

I was born in 1961. Now I think the 16 years that elapsed between 1961 and the end of the wars is nothing. To a child growing up it felt like an eternity, an entirely different world.

I was growing up listening to Queen. Freddie Mercury threw those incredible melodies into his songs.

Although I was not aware of it at the time, the experience of growing up during the Great Depression was to have a profound impact on my intellectual and professional career.

Growing up, mostly in Montreal, I was an only child of loving parents.

I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up.

I don't mind snakes. Growing up in South Africa there were a couple a snakes around... and I'm not talking just about the government!