Like most people, I can be very easily hurt.

Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else.

Yes, I've listened to just a few audiobooks - but hope to listen to more. I've wanted to investigate how my own books sound in this format and find the experience of listening, and not reading, quite fascinating.

My parents inspired me by their example. They both grew up in the Depression, and both of them had to quit school when they were quite young to work, because there actually was no choice. So they've always impressed me with their resilience, their good spirits, their courage. I just remember them carrying on and just doing their lives. They really made a strong impression on me.

My role models were childless: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontes.

The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome" doubt.

I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event, the junctures of people's lives when they go in one direction, not another.