When you have children, you're obligated to live.

...it's closeness that does you in. Never get too close to people, son.

The first-person viewpoint is more enjoyable to write, because it lets me meander more freely, and it can reveal more of the character's self-delusions. Really all the advantages are with first-person, so I'm sorry I don't get to pick and choose.

I don't type [when I write] because . . . I often have the feeling that everything flows directly from my right hand.

There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got.

Not until the final draft do I force myself to remember that I'm going to have to think about how it will affect other people.

Point of view is not something I consciously decide. Almost always, when I come up with a plot I find that the point of view has automatically arrived with it, part and parcel of the story.