With each draft, the work gets better, and usually that means tighter. It means getting the precise word, not the approximate word.

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.

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.

As a writer you can and should expect to hear conflicting responses to your story.

At the heart of all good fiction and at the heart of all good gossip is the same thing: trouble.

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

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