I always work in a room where there's no Internet to keep from being distracted so easily.

The daily act of writing remains as demanding and maddening as it was before, and the pleasure you get from writing - rare but profound - remains at the true heart of the enterprise. On their best days, writers all over the world are winning Pulitzers, all alone in their studios, with no one watching.

I live my own life and nurse my own wounds. It's not the best way to live. But it's the way I am.

Scars crossed her welded wrists.

It was amazing how it worked: the tiniest bit of truth made credible the greatest lies.

She understood that her heart operated on its own instructions, that she had no control over it or, indeed, anything else.

I think there's a real connection between acting and writing novels because the way I write characters has a little bit to do with the method acting that I was taught in high school and college.