Peter Heller

“I remember the cover of this one L'Amour book showed a guy on horseback, leading a pack horse across a creek in the snow. Something about that cover - all I wanted to do was drift the high lonesome on horseback.”

“I got out of Iowa all set to be a poet and a novelist, but you know what? It's really tough to make a living as a poet.”

“New Zealand is weird. I mean, it does not seem of this earth, not to me. It really is like something made up.”

“Is it possible to love so desperately that life is unbearable? I don't mean unrequited, I mean being in the love. In the midst of it and desperate. Because knowing it will end, because everything does. End.”

“That is what we are, what we do: nose a net, push push, a net that never exists. The knots in the mesh as strong as our own believing. Our own fears.”

“I'm fascinated by characters who are faced with big losses and have to put their lives back together again.”

“I had to make a living, so I got happily diverted into writing about expeditions and adventures.”

“She collapsed. I stepped forward and caught her. I thought of two trees nearly unrooted and leaning against each other.”

“When we are most scared is the time to summon our clearest concentration and move forward, not back.”

“I want to be two people at once. One runs away.”