I'm not much interested in my own self when I write. I'm interested in what I observe out there, what's going on around me.

Men didn't understand that you couldn't let yourself be consumed with passion when there were so many people needing your attention, when there was so much work to do. Men didn't understand that there was nothing big enough to exempt you from your obligations, which began as soon as the sun rose over the paper company and ended only after you'd finished the day's chores and fell exhausted into sleep against the background noise of I-94.

I thought that you had to learn to write by yourself and if you couldn't do it, then you were out of luck.

We have a shotgun we inherited from my father-in-law, a paranoid Englishman living in Texas. I have a .22 Marlin rifle, similar to the one Annie Oakley had, and my husband has a .357 Magnum pistol. All those are locked up tight, of course. We have a couple of pellet guns that get more use than the real guns.

A Life in Men is a joyful, ambitious novel that is also an adventure traversing three continents, as well as a meditation on love, sex, and, most important, friendship, which can overcome time, distance, and even death.

I was never a big reader as a kid. My imagination wasn't captured by books very often. It was captured more often by boys and partying and riding horses.

The best and easiest lesson for me was to learn that writing is mostly hard work.