I think you can get a sort of intensity and an edginess offering nine stories in a book. Competing versions of things.

I think you can get a sort of intensity and an edginess offering nine stories in a book. Competing versions of things.

Three of my novels and a good number of my short stories are told from the point of view of men. I was brought up in a house of women.

It is important to find a publisher and equally important not to be noticed until your third or fourth book.

I like it that they [disciples] feed me and pay for my clothes and protect me. And in return I will do for them what I can, but no more than that. Just as I cannot breathe the breath of another or help the heart of someone else to beat or their bones not to weaken or their flesh not to shrivel, I cannot say more than I can say. And I know how deeply this disturbs them, and it would make me smile, this earnest need for foolish anecdote or sharp simple patterns in the story of what happened to us all, except that I have forgotten how to smile.

in skies of deepening blue the moon, heaven's queen was now afloat

I work very deliberately, with a plan. But sometimes I come to a point that I planned as the end and it needs softening. Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep - it can't be done abruptly.