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 think that inevitably, the trouble our characters go through is a kind of metaphor for what's happening in ourselves.

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.

I don't think a white person can write accurately and convincingly about what black people experience of oppression.

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.

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.

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.