I rarely talk about work with writers, and I love getting together with writers. I think writers are great to get together with, because we can talk about everything. I think that's why I enjoy it. Writers tend to be pretty open-minded, and pretty profane and loose. They have fun minds.

As for what's the most challenging aspect of teaching, it's convincing younger writers of the importance of reading widely and passionately.

The truth, finally, is who can tell it.

Imagination might not be limitless. It's still tethered to the universe of what we know.

I wanted to write about the Korean War, but I had no entry into it that made the kind of sense it needs to make for a novelist.

I don't think that stuff is gone - I just don't want to dwell on it. There's a difference. As I said, I think we all have tendencies as writers, and I think we all have experience that we bring as readers to each project.

By definition it uses and plays and delights in time. It delights in the interlacing of chronologies and the consequences of that interlacing. And those have personal and psychological expressions in a character. Aside from other issues of writing, psychological characterization is what narrative can do best.