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

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.

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

I revise like crazy. I start revising before the pen hits the paper.

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.

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.