The only way to find out if you can write is to set aside a certain period every day and try. Save enough money to give yourself six months to be a full-time writer. Work every day and the pages will pile up.

I would, however, start writing fiction about 10 years before I actually did, because it's such great fun to do, many times more creative than nonfiction.

My work caused me to interview hundreds of women about their lives and their problems.

I have only one reader - me. I'm the average reader. If I like it, that's all I worry about.

the rich are different only because people treat them as if they were.

Heaven knows, I've exposed myself in my novels through the use of fantasy and imagination... now my new book is about what really happened to me... not my heroines.

Have some sort of a private place to work in. Put up a sign to keep from being interrupted. Mine says: "Please, do not knock, do not say hello or goodbye, do not ask what's for dinner, do not disturb me unless the police or firemen have to be called."