I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family's, and my country's past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things. This much, at least, I've figured out. I know this much is true.

Among these he mentions painters Edward Hopper and Rene Magritte. A. He credits his perennial teaching of certain novels to high school students with teaching him about "the scaffolding" of longer stories.

Wally Lamb (born October 17 1950) is an American author known as the writer of the novels She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True both of which were selected for Oprah's Book Club. He was the director of the Writing Center at Norwich Free Academy in Norwich from 1989 to 1998 and has taught Creative Writing in the English Department at the University of Connecticut.