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

There is a lot of censorship about writing that's exerted from all directions, from families or governments and society, even the fear of being offensive in some way.

I don't have the courage not to write all the time.

You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.

I think we need to develop the courage to write from the viewpoint of people who may seem quite different from ourselves, who might have a different sexual orientation or a different race or a different ethnicity.

Whoever would write books? It's suffering as well as greatly satisfying. And certainly there's suffering in the sense that you don't know for a long time how to do it.

I remember I had had one woman who had three or four kids, and some of them were having problems. I said, 'Maybe you could go write somewhere else, away from your house.' And sure enough, all kinds of wonderful stuff emerged. She was keeping too much charge of herself because she couldn't stop being a mother when she was in the house. You have to find your own way of letting loose, if you're one of those people.