I always know more about the ending, even the aftermath to the ending, than I know about the beginning. And so there's a construction that works from back to front.

It's my experience that very few writers, young or old, are really seeking advice when they give out their work to be read. They want support; they want someone to say, "Good job."

The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of.

Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.

Sometimes that's a year, sometimes it's 18 months, where all I'm doing is taking notes. I'm reconstructing the story from the back to the front so that I know where the front is.

The gardener had a dread of small women; he'd always imagined them to have an anger disproportionate to their size.

I have lots of notebooks around, because one great advantage of writing by hand-in addition to how much it slows you down-is that it makes me write at the speed that I feel I should be composing, rather than faster than I can think, which is what happens to me on any keyboard.