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

Censorship is all around us, I don't think it's innate.

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

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

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

Even murderers, I suppose, experience the loss of car keys the way the rest of us do. I mean, how can they not? Once you make this person scramble around the house looking for her car keys and finally find them, get in the car, and run into traffic, we can identify with her enough that when she stops the car and pulls the gun out of her purse and heads in to kill somebody, we'll be with her as much as is possible.