Sometimes indirect style and varying chronology is great, but quite often I've seen it be just something that gets in the way. It turns out when I talk to the writer that she or he, and more often it's a woman, that she's worried.

I get to a certain point, and I think in a novel it's about the third draft, when I want other eyes on it.

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

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

I've been astonished how often, when I convince a writer to tell a story more straightforwardly and to tell it more simply and directly, it turns out that this author is great and the story is wonderful.

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.