I was standing in the schoolyard waiting for a child when another mother came up to me. Have you found work yet? she asked. Or are you still just writing?

It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.

There's surprisingly little difference between writing from a male angle and from a female angle, but I feel more restricted in my language when I'm writing as a male character because males tend to sound less emotionally expressive than females.

...if you catalogue grudges, anything looks bad.

They were like people who run to meet, holding out their arms, but their aim is wrong; they pass each other and keep running.

The very thing that attracts you to someone can end up putting you off.

I'll write maybe one long paragraph describing the events, then a page or two breaking the events into chapters, and then reams of pages delving into my characters. After that, I'm ready to begin