The common workshop goal is revision, not suicide.

There must be a balance of honesty and charity in the workshop. Everyone must be aware of a fellow human being behind the work being discussed, and criticism has to be useful, not just derogatory or laudatory.

My adrenaline started pumping anytime I was within a hundred yards of a bookshop. I loved books nearly as much as I loved clothes. And that's saying something. The feel of them and the smell of them. A bookshop was like like an Aladdin's Cave for me. Entire worlds and lives can be found just behind that glossy cover. All you had to do was look.

hardly anything in L.A. was close to anywhere else you wanted to go.

The common workshop goal is revision, not suicide.

The raw beauty of Natalia Ginzburg’s prose compels our gaze. First we look inward, with the shock of recognition inspired by all great writing, and then, inevitably, out at the shared world she evokes with such uncompromising clarity.

Writing fiction is a solitary occupation but not really a lonely one. The writer's head is mobbed with characters, images and language.