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.

Most written work is a conversation between the editor and the writer, that the writer essentially fulfills in public, and the editor provides the stage for that to happen as well as the prompts.

PhD, MFA, self-taught - the only things you must have to become a writer are the stamina to continue and a wily, cagey heart in the face of extremity, failure, and success.

The way some were entrapped into lives of prostitution, the way that something like marriage could rob them of their rights.

Writers aren't born, they're made - from practice, reading, and a lot of caffeine.

It's my experience that people don't think of fiction writing as being as intellectually serious as other kinds of writing in academia and so without a career as a critic or essayist you can be treated as something of a spiritual medium - a fraud - for "just" writing fiction.

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.