With my family background - my parents were both activists - writing about culture and politics came naturally.

Characters to me are like sonnets, they have limits that you obey which allow a force to enter in, an invention that makes the novel possible. Change the limits and the force leaves. The novel becomes impossible.

I realized that my identity as a novelist was private. Only I knew how much of a novelist I was!

The myth works to make the very real things people don't want to look at visible for them.

As writer pay declined and teacher pay also, we all started hanging out online. You could say online social networks cheapen our friendships or you could say we were cheapened by a plutocratic power grab and this is all we can afford.

I had a naiveté that I would remember the things that I had written already, but I was getting lost in the forest of my own ideas and having to find my way out.

I've been told it's hard to write about singing. I didn't realize that going into it. I might not have tried if I knew!