In some ways, writing a novel, especially a novel set in the past and about characters who once lived, is about amassing enough details and arranging them properly in order to offer the reader a verisimilitude that satisfies his or her curiosity about the story at hand.

I usually don't throw around the word 'fabulous,' but how else to describe buildings decorated with mirrored water dragons, serpents tiled in colored glass, and hundreds - no, thousands, no, tens of thousands - of gold-leaf Buddhas? Luang Prabang has more than 47,000 residents, but its Buddha population must be ten times that.

Since I was a kid, I feel most confident when I'm reading.

When I see someone interesting on the subway - the lady with her new Bible or the delivery guy holding down a dozen Mylar balloons - my mind goes in two different directions. Where are they coming from? And where are they going?

God lets everything happen for a reason. It's all a learning process, and you have to go from one level to another.

Comedy has changed with the times, thank God - slowly, oh my lord, slowly - but it has.

Romantic heroes and heroines are a bit different from the sort of people we run into every day.

I will stay faithful to what God has called me to do all the days of my life, and I don't try to figure it out.