I heard a white writer say, 'Oh, I'd never put black people in my writing, I'm afraid I would offend someone by doing it wrong.' I can't bear that!

Anyone with an imagination can write about the day-to-day experiences of someone he or she is not.

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

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

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.

Sometimes it's interesting to see what people who have too much control need to do to write freely.

When an editor first explained to me the difference between direct and indirect writing, I just thought it was a stylistic choice.