I've always been interested in writing about people, including young children who are not able to speak for themselves. As in my novel 'Black Water,' I provide a voice for someone who has died and can't speak for herself.

Writers and artists never pay attention to advice given by their elders, quite rightly. The only worthwhile advice is the most general: Keep trying, don't give up, don't be discouraged, don't pay attention to detractors. Everyone knows this.

We are stimulated to emotional response, not by works that confirm our sense of the world, but by works that challenge it.

Each genre exerts a considerable spell, as a kind of "form" to be filled, as a Shakespearean sonnet is filled.

I see the world in ways that might be considered somewhat harsh and Darwinistic. At the same time mediated, as in Darwin, by a real idealism and an excitement about the possibilities of the intellect and imagination to deal with this somewhat brutal world.

To be knocked out doesn't mean what it seems. A boxer does not have to get up.

I don't think that any 'ism' is higher than literature or art. So I'm a formalist. I greatly honor and respect the form of a work.