If I'd learned nothing else, it was this: If you want to be a great writer, be a man. If you can't be a man, write like one.

My oldest sister was an actress living in NYC by the time I was ten, and desperately wanted to be the one in charge of the words.

As a writer, my main objective is to tell the story urgently - as if whispering it into one ear - and to know the characters intimately.

I've never thought there was anything I could hope to get by praying for it.

Genres are just bottles for the various boats. The boats matter to me.

One of the reasons I write in different genres is that I get to have the feeling - even fleetingly - that I'm not just writing like Baggott again. I can escape myself.

Are there books about us or something?” This makes Pressia angry - the idea that this world is a subject of study, a story, instead of filled with real people, trying to survive.