David Ebershoff

“I first read 'The Scarlet Letter' when I was fifteen. In it, I found a familiar vision of religious intolerance to the one around me. I grew up in the 1980s, when televangelists, with their fluffed up hair and their tears, self-righteously denounced all kinds of sinners, reserving a special, full-throated enthusiasm for gay people.”

“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?”

“We struggle throughout our lives to learn to accept the shell that transports us through this world, and many of us take great effort to change it. I believe everyone has at least once looked in the mirror and thought, 'That is not me. I am someone else. The world cannot see me as I really am.'”

“Even the most meticulous historians work subjectively. The historian's point of view, his or her selection of subject and sources, the emphasis, the tone - all of these lead to subjective history, inevitably so. I do not say this as a criticism, merely as an observation.”

“Anna's voice wasn't a beautiful voice - rough edged and sorrowful, a bit used, somehow male and female at once. Yet it had more vibrancy to it than most Danish voices, which were often thin and white and too pretty to trigger a shiver. Anna's voice had the heat of the south; it warmed Einar, as if her throat were red with coals.”

“I love to read history; at its best, it is an art.”

“If the Latterday Saints had not abandoned plural marriage, they would have remained a fringe religion and would never have moved into mainstream American culture. Today, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints thrives. It is one of the fastest growing religions in the country and is the most successful American-born religion.”

“The soles of the best writers, a professor once told me, are worn down to holes. This is an incomplete measure, but the image of a writer grinding his or her shoes against curbs and cobblestones stuck with me. The story is always out there, the details around the corner or down the alley.”

“History devours, but at times it resurrects. Some lives must wait for history to catch up.”

“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.”

“The agony of martyrdom is almost too much to bear. In the early hours, when the loss is fresh, there is no comfort in knowing Glory will live on. We speak of the martyrs in History but we cannot know the actual pain they suffered in their final living hours. They enter the realm of the mythic, but we must never forget these were men like ourselves. When their flesh is torn, they cry out. They suffer as you or I would suffer, although more bravely. Remember Christ. Although I am now an enemy to Joseph's legacy, I shudder when recalling his pain.”

“We are born, we live, we disappear. One of the chilling aspects of history is the swiftness with which it carries us into oblivion.”

“'The Danish Girl' was published in 2000. Then it, too, would disappear, as most books do. It fell out of print almost everywhere. I wrote other books and, as an editor, worked on dozens more. Yet always, Lili stayed with me.”

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

“I always love novels that open up a subject to me - like raising a window to a beautiful, mysterious world outside.”

“Marriage fascinates me: how we negotiate its span, how we change within it, how it changes itself, and why some relationships survive and others do not. There isn't a single marriage that couldn't provide enough narrative arc for a novel.”

“Who are we? Whom do we want to become? How do we perceive ourselves? How do we want to be perceived? These questions of identity are often at the core of our own internal struggles. Resolve them, and you are closer to being free.”

“Sometimes when I travel, I like to close my eyes and imagine visiting during another era.”

“I'm not the kind of writer that can write eight hours a day... I'm the kind of writer that the more time I have, the less efficient I am.”

“An artist sees that which does not yet exist. He or she imagines a future others cannot perceive. The artist - and the writer - reshapes reality so that it becomes even more vivid and lasting.”