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"I try to make my books reflect humanity as I see it."
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"Never loan a book to someone if you expect to get it back. Loaning books is the same as giving them away."

"A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books."

"Let this little book be thy friend, if, owing to fortune or through thine own fault, thou canst not find a dearer companion."

"A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thing book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat."
Explore more quotes by Tony Hillerman


"An author knows his landscape best; he can stand around, smell the wind, get a feel for his place."


"I am 82 years old. I imagine that I will keep on writing as long as anyone wants to keep reading."


"Having grown up in Oklahoma when it was one of the last states which prohibited liquor, I grew up with War On Drugs, where every teenager knew who the bootleggers were."


"I know what I write about seems exotic to a lot of people, but not for me. I pulled up to an old trading post and saw a few elderly Navajos sitting on a bench. I felt right at home."


"You write for two people, yourself and your audience, who are usually better educated and at least as smart."


"I always have one or two, sometimes more, Navajo or other tribes' cultural elements in mind when I start a plot. In Thief of Time, I wanted to make readers aware of Navajo attitude toward the dead, respect for burial sites."


"Although I wasn't able to get a visa for Vietnam, I was able to talk with swift boat veterans to get a feel for the time and place, and I visited a tropical prison in the Philippines to get a sense of what a Vietnamese prison might have been like."
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