To do my job well, I have to be a good listener. The listening is so much more important than the talking.

For writers, so much is done in isolation. It can be easy to feel detached, or to get a little lost along the way.

I usually work seven days a week and rarely take vacations, which is both lame and unsustainable. I don't mind the idea of writing seven days a week, I suppose. Getting some work done early in the morning. But ideally I would love to take one day a week off.

The modern media environment is so overrun with bullshit and static and people trying to sell you stupid crap. It makes you want to bite yourself.

I can only imagine the quiet horror that people must endure when they meet me in person.

I'm a radio nerd. I've loved radio since I was a kid. I'm a huge Howard Stern fan.

Oftentimes, if a writer really gets her hooks into me, I'll want to read interviews, or listen to an interview, or read a literary biography or a memoir of some kind. And doing so almost always deepens my enjoyment of the author and her work.