I learned to love stories by listening to them.

I grew up in a house without many books. The books the nuns made us read in school didn't interest me.

I was reading for understanding. I wanted to do to a reader what Salinger did for me.

Every person in therapy has a love disorder.

Revision is not the end of the creative process, but a new beginning. It's a chance not just to clean up and edit, but to open up and discover. The energetic prose comes about from all the energy that went into crafting it, I suppose.

Novels are written, not wished into existence. You have to sit your ass in the chair or nothing gets done.

Actually, my first literary heroes were the Romantic poets, so I began to get serious by writing poems. I have notebooks full of them that I cherish but am afraid to look at.