It's easier to write about a place sometimes when you've left it, when you can apply your imagination to your memory and let your emotions guide the writing about a place.

If you think about it, fiction is nothing more than gossip about the people you've made up.

Love is always a surprise and you never get it right.

What you create when you're teaching fiction writing is a kind of literary salon, not a social club or a mutual admiration society, not a debating society, not a repair shop, not a fight club or a soap box. It's a place to have a conversation about a story.

I lost my job and started painting houses with a friend. The marriage had ended about the same time the career did.

The landscape of childhood shapes us as it shapes the characters in our stories. You never forget the sacred places of your childhood.

I write with a fountain pen. And then revise word by word and line by line so that the first draft of a scene is usually the tenth or so draft.