You can't tell a writer they should just be more confident.

I think a day in your life on which nothing bad happens may be a wonderful day, but it probably isn't going to be the basis of a story.

Every once in a while someone says, 'You can't really learn anything, if you're really a writer then you wouldn't need to do it.' But I think what people need is the sense of not being alone. They go to MFA programs to be part of a community of people who care, and then you start caring about your friend who is trying to edit a magazine and your other friend who is stuck in the middle of her poem. There you have all kinds of things to worry about besides your own success.

Sometimes I write well when I'm very upset.

I'm very secretive. I'll write a whole novel and revise it, which might take me two years or more, and the people I know best don't know what I'm writing about.

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

I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.