A couple of times, I could have turned a trick. But I didn't want to start. I knew how it would play. When you started thinking it was easy, you were forgetting what it cost.

My loneliness tasted like pennies.

A book's flaws make it less predictable.

As an artist, you can never get what you want. What you do never approaches what you want it to be.

There used to be a category called women's fiction - meaning not too rude, not too much sex, a bit domestic and internal. Women have changed so much. We're so varied. And we've become more interested in the same varied experience in fiction.

I usually start with something that has some energy, like a compressed character or a situation that's wound up like a spring. Then all I have to do is let it go, let its energy carry the story. And that may not turn out to be the beginning of the book.

Writing mirrors the interior self. You know, any book is like the perfect blueprint of the psyche of the author.