I like to think the price I paid by being open about my private life helped.

There are only three possible endings -aren't there? - to any story: revenge, tragedy or forgiveness. That's it. All stories end like that.

Writers have to have a knack for listening. I need to be able to hear what is being said to me by the voices I create.

We fear passion and laugh at too much love and those who love too much. And still we long to feel.

I lay there, stretched out, looking at the one star visible through the tiny window of the room. Only connect. How can you do that when the connections are broken?

You have to engage with people who are different from you and try to work with their thinking and their mind. That's a real challenge.

It is important not to force a character into something. Fiction writers can be too controlling - usually that's a terror of our own unconscious processes.