Using your imagination is the one time in life you can really go anywhere.

I don't write for an audience, I don't think whether my book will sell, I don't sell it before I finish writing it.

[I remember going] to a hotel gym at six o'clock in the morning, and the television was on, and it's some drama in which two men have clearly kidnapped a woman. They're interrogating her, and they put a plastic bag over her head. They're suffocating her, and I'm thinking, It's six o'clock in the morning! Why does anybody need to see this? How can I find the off switch?

You are always someones favorite unfolding story

The secret is to keep adding voices, adding ideas, and moving things around as you put together your life. If you’re lucky, putting together your life is a process that will last through every single day you’re alive.

Maybe that was the definition of life everlasting: the belief that the next generation would carry your work forward.

You can't be a good person when you're writing and a bad person to your husband or a bad friend.