But I care about the reader, and I'm trying to keep the reader's attention for as long as I can.

If I write a character, instead of looking from the outside, like maybe a journalist would, trying to describe them physically and figuring out what kind of things they might be interested in or have in their house, I don't really do it that way. I try to feel what it would be like to be inside this person, to be them.

Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.

It's often said that a traumatic experience early in life marks a person forever, pulls her out of line, saying, "Stay there. Don't move.

I think it is important to remind people of the extent of our free will.

It was possible to feel superior to other people and feel like a misfit at the same time.

I was unemployable when I got out of college.