There are, of course, people who didn't create the trouble they're in, but lots of them do.

I wanted to eat her pain, take it into me and make it my own.

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.

Fiction is always really a labor.

I have seven step-siblings from my mother's second and third marriages. My degree of closeness to my step-siblings varies among the seven but I have a great sense of loyalty to all of them, especially the four from my childhood. If those people needed my help I would be there for them.

Do you want to do this thing? Sit down and do it. Are you not writing? Keep sitting there. Does it not feel right? Keep sitting there. Think of yourself as a monk walking the path to enlightenment. Think of yourself as a high school senior wanting to be a neurosurgeon. Is it possible? Yes. Is there some shortcut? Not one I've found. Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.

For a man to know what he has when he had it, that is what makes him a fortunate man.