Beauty, you can find it here if you look hard enough.

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 didn't start writing so that I could more deeply know myself. I was bored of myself, my life, my childhood, my hometown. I started writing as a way to know others, to get away from myself.

Sometimes you meet someone and you know that your life will be different from then on.

You want the greatest trick for writing a novel? Here it is: imagine urgently whispering your story into one person's ear - and only one. This one visualization will clarify every word choice you make.

It's not that I bounce ideas off of my children as much as it is that having children has had a profound effect on the way I see the world. They have mined my soul. They've made me a better person and therefore a more empathetic writer.

Red Sox fans have been pushed to the brink over the years, but that's how faith grows stronger.