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

The facts, however, are unimportant in fiction. It's not the events of my life that I mine, but the emotional experiences I've had.

I had begun what I thought might be a career in social work. I was married and deeply involved in the anti-war movement. I thought I'd go about saving the world one person at a time. I worked with kids, teenagers mostly, in neighborhood centers, on the streets, and eventually in a drop-in center.

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

Love is anticipation and memory, uncertainty and longing. It’s unreasonable, of course. Nothing begins with so much excitement and hope and pleasure as love, except maybe writing a story. And nothing fails as often, except writing stories. And like a story, love must be troubled to be interesting.

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.

The regional tags are often pejorative and dismissive. Don't think of place-bound stories, in other words, but of stories with a strong sense of place.