When writing a novel, I'm not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don't know what it is.

I believe in rules of behavior, and I'm quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules.

Ambition robs you of your childhood. The moment you want to become an adult—in any way—something in your childhood dies.

In a school community, someone who reads a book for some secretive purpose, other than discussing it, is strange. What was she reading for?

For most of my life, when I've finished the book I'm writing, there've always been as many as two or three other novels waiting to be written next. And the decision driving which one of them it should be was never based on how long it had waited or how many accumulated pages of notes I had.

The concept of writing a novel and not knowing where it's going - I don't know how to do that. Novels are plot- and character-driven, so if I don't know what becomes of people, how can I know where it should begin?

Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn't know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn't know he was a novelist either.