We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.

Certainly children are being encouraged far more than they were seventy-five years ago and are more accepted as they are.

I began to see, again and again, stories that were first confusing and second where the emotional impact was muted because the big scene came before the explanation of what was going on. There was a reverse chronological order as well as a concealment of what exactly was going on. I think often that comes out of the fear of being boring, and sometimes I think it's just an attempt to seem clever.

Anyone with an imagination can write about the day-to-day experiences of someone he or she is not.

There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too.

Sometimes it's interesting to see what people who have too much control need to do to write freely.

We're always inventing, even if we're making someone who's fairly close to ourselves.