Somehow we have to detach from feeling as though money is a quick and easy standard by which we can gauge how well we're doing.

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

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

Inevitably we start by thinking that if our work is any good, we'll get money. It's as we would if you started up a business or if you work in another profession.

We have to diversify, we have to find work we can do that helps other people while helping ourselves, work that has to do with writing that isn't necessarily just writing saleable novels or getting huge advances.

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

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.