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.

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.

In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.

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

We have to diversify, we have to find work we can do that helps other people while helping ourselves, work that has to do with writing that isn't necessarily just writing saleable novels or getting huge advances.

Certainly children are being encouraged far more than they were seventy-five years ago and are more accepted as they are.