If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one. But we are a country - USA - that likes to be punitive. We want to restrict. It is a kind of religious fervor run amuck.

When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it - rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.

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.

Thus we try to keep our heroes alive; hence we remember them.

If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one.

I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you're capable of making it.

Adolescence-is it the first time in life we discover that we have something terrible to hide from those who love us?