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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

Telling someone to be confident in the abstract is not going to make it easier for the unconfident writer to actually get herself or himself to the point of being able to put in the upsetting stuff.