What I think," Chatty says, "is that if a man loves a woman more than a woman loves a man, then they're even.

The worst of it is over now, and I can't say that I am glad. Lose that sense of loss--you have gone and lost something else.

I'm not first and foremost interested in story and the what-happens, but I'm interested in who's telling it and how they're telling it and the effects of whatever happened on the characters and the people.

I have written letters that are failures, but I have written few, I think, that are lies. Trying to reach a person means asking the same question over and over again: Is this the truth, or not? I begin this letter to you, then, in the western tradition. If I understand it, the western tradition is: Put your cards on the table.

I assemble stories-me and a hundred million other people-at the sentence level. Not by coming up with a sweeping story line.

What I think," Chatty says, "is that if a man loves a woman more than a woman loves a man, then they're even.

I started writing by doing small related things but not the thing itself, circling it and getting closer. I had no idea how to write fiction. So I did journalism because there were rules I could learn. You can teach someone to write a news story. They might not write a great one, but you can teach that pretty easily.