It's never that hard for me to imagine what it must feel like to be someone else, whether it's an American teenage girl or a Japanese octogenarian man

I think I write what's interesting to me, and so if I'm reading I like to have a very thorough idea of a character in a book that's by someone else.

People who think my books are autobiographical, which they're not, credit me with having a much better memory than I do. I do, however, have a powerful imagination

Later on, when I tried to imagine how I might have ruined things, that would occur to me - that I'd so rarely resisted, that I hadn't made it hard enough for him. Maybe it was like gathering your strength and hurling your body against a door you believe to be locked, and then the door opens easily - it wasn't locked at all - and you're standing looking into the room, trying to remember what it was you thought you wanted.

I have this theory that the likeability question comes up so much more with female characters created by female authors than it does with male characters and male authors

Ordinarily, of course, I thought it best to remain inconspicuous, but the gesture had a certain irresistable theatricaility, and an inevitablility. Sometimes you can feel the pull of what other people want from you, and you sacrifice yourself, you risk seeming odd or sunsavory, to keep them entertained.

Personally, I have never wished I were a male novelist.