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

We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.

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.

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.

You may be somebody who writes best for a small press that doesn't pay very well, but you might have a fascinating and intricate style that might not appeal to as many readers but will be incredibly meaningful to the readers you have. Truly, that's as wonderful if not more wonderful.

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.

There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too.