Writing well involves walking the path of most resistance. Sitting still, being patient, allowing the lunatic dream to take shape on the page, then the shaping, the pencil on the page, breathing, slowing down, being willing–no, more than willing, being wide open–to press the bruise until it blossoms.

I'm an urban person who loves living in the country.

I often envy my friends who are visual artists. Visual artists have other things to work with. Other media. I envy my sculptor friends: they have hunks of matter. Marble. Wood. It's physical, which I find very appealing. What we have is nothing, is just glaringly blank.

When I was starting out there was no Internet, there wasn't this sense that you could be connected to other writers around the world. And that created a kind of innocence, or parochial quality, even in NYC.

Those memories that are engraved within me become teaching tools, ways of connecting with others, of creating an empathic bridge, of reaching out a hand and saying, I've been there, too.

When I was writing my first novel, I smoked cigarettes. And when I think about what it was like to smoke, I remember exactly the feeling of sitting in front of my big old computer in that little room where I wrote my first novel.

I've always felt like my nose is pressed to glass. I always feel a little bit like an outsider.