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.

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

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.

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

If you have a character stand up and put on her shoes and open the door, in order to do that, you're imagining her shoes and her clothes and her house and her door. The character becomes more real. But once you've done that, you can probably just get it all across with a couple of details.

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.

Little children are all writers.