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

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.

Every once in a while someone says, 'You can't really learn anything, if you're really a writer then you wouldn't need to do it.' But I think what people need is the sense of not being alone. They go to MFA programs to be part of a community of people who care, and then you start caring about your friend who is trying to edit a magazine and your other friend who is stuck in the middle of her poem. There you have all kinds of things to worry about besides your own success.

There seems to be a tremendous desire among many people now to know authors and how they work, to know what's autobiographical and what isn't.

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

I think you have to remember that writing is hard; my first editor used to say that to me.

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.