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 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.

We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.

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

In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.

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.

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.