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

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.

There were the fairy tales my father told to me at bedtime. All the standards. I thought my father invented wolves.

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.

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

You lose a wallet or keys or something and you notice in a second, but your life can go missing and you don't even know it.