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

I think we need to develop the courage to write from the viewpoint of people who may seem quite different from ourselves, who might have a different sexual orientation or a different race or a different ethnicity.

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.

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

I just like doing it, I like writing.

I'm very secretive. I'll write a whole novel and revise it, which might take me two years or more, and the people I know best don't know what I'm writing about.