Sometimes it's interesting to see what people who have too much control need to do to write freely.

Sometimes people want to know how to write a story from the point of view of a murderer and make her sympathetic. I think the answer is that you start by having her look for her car keys, because everybody knows what it's like.

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

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.

The making of fiction takes literally what is suggested by our imagination.

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

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.