Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, but usually fiction is just better.

I have prided myself with striving for objectivity, something many literary-minded critics dismiss as impossible. But in Washington, reporters are practically the only people who actually spend time talking to Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, and I find the longer I report in Washington, the mushier and less conclusive my own views are. I like it that way.

History - the non-fiction version - must inform the fiction to make it truthful; too much of it and your genres are colliding.

I am not trying to be young again. But I do feel the need to capture that energy in story form before it slips from my mind, to recount those adventures if not relive them.

Novelists may be able to seek advice from readers and editors, but in the end, it is up to them to get the book right.

It is simply much easier to infuse life, feeling, and higher truth into a novel than a non-fiction work, to find the license to write truth without being wedded to fact.

I was very disciplined when home - lights out for the girls at 9:00, two hours of writing for me. It was murder on my marriage.