There are some advantages to being a writer: you do generally get better as you get older. I think I understand things better. When I was a kid, I was kind of guessing at the emotion. Now I'm interested in writing more difficult books, books that confront the facts of life, of death and dying and failure - the majority of life. You write outwardly imaginative books when you're younger. When you're older you apply imagination to internal experience.

If you write a page a day in couple months you have a good chunk of the book and then after a year you have almost a book. It's not that...hard.

Writing a book is like an unknown abyss, every time. Every book is different. Contrary to what unpublished writers think, it's horrible to have a book out.

I work with wood a lot. I like building. I think of building. I would love to buy land on some water somewhere and build a house. That'd be nice.

There are writers who draw immediate attention to the fact that it's fiction. And I like some of that, but it doesn't really have the power.

You have to be smart enough to see the world for yourself and honest. The whole book-publicity thing is not really honest, at base.

I've written five books, a book every three years. I'm fairly lazy and it doesn't take that much...people who are not lazy are Isaac Asimov.