I like to go where the life is.

I can't personally drink or fight too much nowadays because I have to be perky in the morning in order to write.

I realized that I was writing about folks with lots of skills, especially fix-it skills and survival skills, who were nonetheless not doing well in the new-millennium America.

I do different work, teaching and running around visiting universities and bookstores, and that prevents me from writing. But it's nice to be wanted as a writer.

The truth is I tried to write for years and I wasn't very good.

I enjoy shooting. Around where I live, it's something you do for entertainment once in a while, you go out and shoot targets.

It occurred to Susan that men were always waiting for something cataclysmic-love or war or a giant asteroid. Every man wanted to be a hot-headed Bruce Willis character, fighting against the evil foreign enemy while despising the domestic bureaucracy. Men just wanted to focus on one big thing, leaving the thousands of smaller messes for the women around them to clean up.