I figure 1000 words a day, or four pages, and sometimes I'll write more, but I'll try not to. Because I think you don't want to exhaust what it is you're writing about, so the next day you would have to gear up for a brand new scene.

I notice that I only publish once every four years. It takes a couple of years to write a book and then, for me, for one reason or another, it usually takes about a year of sort of dicking around before I start up. I write a review or little magazine pieces and touring with the other book. But mainly it's just you're not ready, I'm not ready to start another. You're just not up for it.

I don't think you think of your audience as much as you think, when you're revising, how it holds together. I mean I think the first draft is art, and the second draft, third, fourth draft is craft. Putting it together so that it has a good pattern.

I figure 1000 words a day, or four pages, and sometimes I'll write more, but I'll try not to. Because I think you don't want to exhaust what it is you're writing about, so the next day you would have to gear up for a brand new scene.

I try to write in the morning when I'm working on a novel. You get up, you have breakfast, you read the paper, you make a couple of phone calls, and then you sit on the couch and start. I use felt pen and white notepaper.

I'm absolutely not an athletic person, but I used to be married to a runner. He would say that, especially in long-distance races, you could tell who was going to win and who wasn't, and if the person was present behind his eyes, if he was looking around and paying attention, you could be pretty sure he wasn't going to win. The person who was tranced out had a much better chance of winning. Because he or she had lost his or her governing self.

A great novelist must open the reader's heart, allow the reader to remember the vastness and glory -- and shame and shabbiness -- of what it is to be human.