If you write a good action sequence well in a novel, you're already writing it for film, because the only way to do it well is to use some of the same tricks. They're rhetorical, not visual, but it's the same move.

I'm an ecumenical reader, grew up with all sorts of fiction, teach writing, went to the Iowa Writers' Workshop, so my tastes and interests are broad.

So perhaps the greatest worry of all was that one day you would realize that all the worries of your life amounted to one thing: the desire to just stop worrying.

It had never occurred to her that God would cry, but of course that was wrong. God would be crying all the time. He would cry and cry and never stop.

One of the traps or the pitfalls of writing a trilogy - or a triptych, or whatever term you want to use - is that the second book can be a long second act to get you from book one to book three, which borrows all of its energy from the first book.

My inventing time is all done under the influence of aerobic exercise. Basically, I do all my thinking while I run.

It was what you did, Wolgast understood; you started to tell a story about who you were, and soon enough the lies were all you had and you became that person.