You look at something. I used to teach writing at Northwestern University and the students would say, "Well, I don't know what I want to write. I don't have a subject. What should I write about?” And I'd come in with a book by a man named John McPhee, that's called Annals of the Former World. It's a thousand page book. It weighs like six pounds. And I'd just hold it up and I'd say, "This is a book about a rock. And so if this guy can write a thousand pages about a rock, you can figure something out." And it's so it's about geology and it won two Pulitzer prizes. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. But my dad's philosophy of life is nothing is uninteresting, everything is interesting. And if you hang out at the Santa Fe Institute for even a day, you will find people talking about everything under the sun, it's the most fascinating place. And so I have to thank my father for instilling in me that kind of curiosity because he was that kind of guy.
— Laurence Gonzales in an interview with Daniel Scrivner