As soon as you publish a book and the reader reads it, they're making an extension of your brain with their brain.

I'm feminist in that I believe that there should be equality between men and women. I get deeply frustrated on a daily basis by the enormous gender divide in the U.S. literary world. But I don't know how to deal with it, so I don't tend to say much about it.

In terms of writing, I think what most fiction writers treasure more than anything is the feeling that they're living for the length of a book inside another person.

I'm a physical learner. I learn from writing drafts, not reading them.

While writing, writers are living inside a character or characters, and when the book ekes into the world, writers are living inside the reader. That's more than connecting.

Being a writer means I sit in a dark (and pretty dank) room off my garage for many hours a day, and in my wallowing moments I can feel as if I'm already on the outside of society, peering wistfully in.

Childhood is such a delicate tissue; what they had done this morning could snag somewhere in the little ones, make a dull, small pain that will circle back again and again, and hurt them in small ways for the rest of their lives.