I sat around the kitchen every Sunday afternoon listening to my mother and aunts talk about the people in the neighborhood. Gossip - I loved it. And that turns out to be the writer's job: to attend to the gossip and spread it as far as you can.

Reading honest literature makes you love the world. Knowledge and understanding are love. Reading educates our feelings and enhances our sympathy. When you read for understanding, you are fundamentally changed. You are a different person at the end of the story or the novel than you were when it began.

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

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

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

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

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.