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.

When an editor first explained to me the difference between direct and indirect writing, I just thought it was a stylistic choice.

When I've taught writing to five, six, and seven year olds, it's not very different than talking to an adult writer. They're writers then, and when they get to be young teenagers they're not anymore. You might go and talk to them about writing, and they'll be very self-conscious or will have detached themselves from the group.

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

Teaching is very important to me, and it has become more important as I get older.

I had never written about what it's like to live the life of a writer, and I had never read a book that combined talking about the life of writing and how you can do it, how you can stand it, how you can emotionally manage it, with the choices that we all make on the page.

Truly things are better in general now, in America, than in the past.