You can’t control what other people think about your art. Think about the part of yourself that you can control, which is your ability to be kind and loving and creative.

When I wrote nonfiction, my best work was the really personal stuff.

Well, I always say that the two things I was most disastrous at in my life, being a teenager and being a wife, were the two things I really wound up cashing in on when I was writing fluffy magazine pieces.

I was starting to wonder if I was ready to be a writer, not someone who won prizes, got published and was given the time and space to work, but someone who wrote as a course of life. Maybe writing wouldn't have any rewards. Maybe the salvation I would gain through work would only be emotional and intellectual. Wouldn't that be enough, to be a waitress who found an hour or two hidden in every day to write?

My novels are very much the same, as I think many people's novels are.

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

The hardest piece of nonfiction I ever wrote isn't anywhere close to the easiest piece of fiction I never wrote.