With a time-based medium like theater or film, you can't have the audience getting restless in their seats. They're stuck there on their bums; you have to pay enormous attention to pace and you can't lose your way.

I watch his hands, they're lumpy but clever. "Is there a word for adults when they aren't parents?" Steppa laughs. "Folks with other things to do?

There may be certain genres that men dominate, but fiction not so much. The question of prizes is tricky because there are so many prizes.

I always wince a little bit when I send me to each of my new books. I wince at submitting myself to my father's judgment. But, of course, he's such a fond father that he always writes back, saying it's the greatest thing ever written.

I really like to keep my palette small but to be very intense, very myopic.

For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.

Identity politics are wearisome; you don't want to go on speaking for any one group as a writer.