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.

This is true in other fields, too, that a legal aid lawyer gets a whole lot less money than a Hollywood lawyer who handles the estates of celebrities. Maybe the legal aid lawyer is doing something better, though, and maybe they're happier. It's not a completely unheard of idea, but I do think we have to remind ourselves at times to look for satisfaction in other ways.

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.

I just like doing it, I like writing.

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.

It's a scary thing for fiction writers, when you're always writing from the point of view both as and for someone who is different.

I began to see, again and again, stories that were first confusing and second where the emotional impact was muted because the big scene came before the explanation of what was going on. There was a reverse chronological order as well as a concealment of what exactly was going on. I think often that comes out of the fear of being boring, and sometimes I think it's just an attempt to seem clever.