I had never written about what it's like to live the life of a writer, and I had never read a book that combined talking about the life of writing and how you can do it, how you can stand it, how you can emotionally manage it, with the choices that we all make on the page.

Writers sometimes are paid a great deal of money, but much more frequently they're not paid or are paid only a little bit.

I love to read nonfiction and memoir, but I'm mostly interested in the piece of writing more than the person.

I've been astonished how often, when I convince a writer to tell a story more straightforwardly and to tell it more simply and directly, it turns out that this author is great and the story is wonderful.

I think that inevitably, the trouble our characters go through is a kind of metaphor for what's happening in ourselves.

Telling someone to be confident in the abstract is not going to make it easier for the unconfident writer to actually get herself or himself to the point of being able to put in the upsetting stuff.

I get to a certain point, and I think in a novel it's about the third draft, when I want other eyes on it.