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

It's a scary thing for fiction writers, when you're always writing from the point of view both as and for someone who is different.

Being part of a community of writers is huge. I really think that's why people go to MFA programs.

I don't think a white person can write accurately and convincingly about what black people experience of oppression.

Sometimes people want to know how to write a story from the point of view of a murderer and make her sympathetic. I think the answer is that you start by having her look for her car keys, because everybody knows what it's like.

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

I think the difference between writing as someone and writing for them is that when you write for someone, you take on a kind of political burden or message, which I don't think we have the right to do.