If you have a character stand up and put on her shoes and open the door, in order to do that, you're imagining her shoes and her clothes and her house and her door. The character becomes more real. But once you've done that, you can probably just get it all across with a couple of details.

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

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!

Little children are all writers.

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

We're always inventing, even if we're making someone who's fairly close to ourselves.

Whoever would write books? It's suffering as well as greatly satisfying. And certainly there's suffering in the sense that you don't know for a long time how to do it.