The outline is 95 percent of the book. Then I sit down and write, and that's the easy part.

I like the way words go together and I like the gamesmanship of writing poetry. It is such a challenge.

Hardcover books are fairly expensive these days and to read one requires a significant commitment of time in our busy society. So I want to make sure that when readers buy one of my books they get something they're familiar with.

She believed not in divine salvation but in the proposition that we poor mortals are fully capable of saving ourselves, if conditions and inclinations are right, and the evidence of this potential is found in the smallest of gestures, like the uncertain resting of a large hand on a bony shoulder.

People with children and people with their own business always pick up a ringing phone.

Trying to write books with a subject matter or in a genre or style you're not familiar with is the best way to find the Big Block looming.

That's the past for you. Not only does it come back at the most unexpected, and inconvenient, times but it's set in stone.