The Clifton Park library was absolutely on the mark last year when they booked Anthony Doerr to come and speak. It was right as his book "All the Light We Cannot See" was getting some buzz, before it was the book of the year, before he won the Pulitzer prize for fiction, before he refused every new appearance invitation. (I read his book, and wrote about it last December. I loved it.)

His talk was very polished, and quite entertaining. He talked about his love of books as a child, his love of learning, called himself a dilettante, and said that writing this book was a ten-year process in which he got to learn about many things - radio, war, Saint-Malo, puzzles, etc. He wondered how he could write this story about two children growing up during the war, in which they were on opposite sides, and have the reader be invested in both of them.

"Reading enriches your experience of what it means to be human./ The path to the big things are through the small ordinary details. / Novels are about the humanity./ Fundamental: the emotion of being alive in the world./ Sometimes it's ok to just stand in the weather."

and my favorite - "Artistic maturity is getting rid of things that took a long time to create" - a reference to the need to kill your darlings.

Here is an interview that is similar to the talk he gave in Clifton Park:

http://www.scribnermagazine.com/2014/10/anthony-doerr-all-the-light-we-cannot-see/