Every once in a while someone says, 'You can't really learn anything, if you're really a writer then you wouldn't need to do it.' But I think what people need is the sense of not being alone. They go to MFA programs to be part of a community of people who care, and then you start caring about your friend who is trying to edit a magazine and your other friend who is stuck in the middle of her poem. There you have all kinds of things to worry about besides your own success.

You can't tell a writer they should just be more confident.

You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.

I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.

You may be somebody who writes best for a small press that doesn't pay very well, but you might have a fascinating and intricate style that might not appeal to as many readers but will be incredibly meaningful to the readers you have. Truly, that's as wonderful if not more wonderful.

I just like doing it, I like writing.

Truly things are better in general now, in America, than in the past.