Peter Heller

The one thing they didn't tell you at Iowa is how hard it is to make a living writing fiction and poetry.

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.

There's always been in my life that tension between living and writing. For me, because I'm so physically exuberant, it was extra hard to sit still at the desk and put in the hours that you need to put in to write.

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 don't know if we will really have a doomsday for human beings, but if we did, to me, it wouldn't be an unjust outcome, given how many species we're taking with us every year.

Surfing is a life path. You have to really commit... You have to let go and have faith that it's gonna work out when you take off.

Wanted to write fiction since I was 11, since I first read 'In Our Time' by Hemingway.

With fiction, I felt like I could bring to bear my full imagination, my entire heart, and so you feel very vulnerable. It's not your physical life, but it's everything else, so it felt like a lot was at stake.

I have two younger sisters, and it was a family full of creativity.

A lot of my nonfiction is very strong environmental stories - I was the first guy to write about the dolphin killings in Japan.

I write a lot of environmental stories.