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

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.

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

I love to read nonfiction and memoir, but I'm mostly interested in the piece of writing more than the person.

If you have a character stand up and put on her shoes and open the door, in order to do that, you're imagining her shoes and her clothes and her house and her door. The character becomes more real. But once you've done that, you can probably just get it all across with a couple of details.

It's hard to say which of us is luckier, the ones who go through long periods when they can't write or the ones who can write pretty easily.

I find that I get very excited about what my students are up to and that I get to be the hurdle they need to jump over.