A beloved student of mine told me she believed the earth was approximately 6,000 years old. She was smart, she was thoughtful, and she was wrong. But I couldn't discount her - I respected her too much. So I debated with her, using every bit of science and logic I had, but I still failed to convince her that the earth was billions of years old.

I wish I were better at straightforward description. I feel like I'm usually overdoing it or underdoing it, and it takes a lot of tweaking to get the details right.

I've found a bit of success in my career, and I'm very relieved by it, but the success that comes after a book is published is never as happy as the feeling of writing, of knowing you've written something good, of feeling like you've had a worthwhile day in the chair. That's the best feeling I know, and as soon as writing stops making me feel that way, I'll stop doing it.

I hate the word juicy in describing anything: lips, plots, oranges. But especially novels. It feels - icky. Reminds me of saliva.

I like writing dialogue - I can hear my characters so clearly that writing dialogue often feels as much like transcribing something as it does like creating it.

I write with the idea that nobody will care about what I've written; I publish with the idea that nobody will care either. Which is why every time somebody cares enough to read a novel of mine, or respond to it - a reader, a reviewer, even my own editor - I'm a little bit amazed, and so hugely grateful.

A beloved student of mine told me she believed the earth was approximately 6,000 years old. She was smart, she was thoughtful, and she was wrong. But I couldn't discount her - I respected her too much. So I debated with her, using every bit of science and logic I had, but I still failed to convince her that the earth was billions of years old.