I like to invent the dialogue that I want to have heard.

Whatever the style is, I want to have a sense that the writer is thinking, and really trying to get at something, and that there's a sense of discovery as the writing goes along.

Nonfiction gives you subjects. Writing fiction I can have more fun, but I have to invent my subject.

There's not usually one reason why we do anything and, in fact, often we don't know why we've done what we've done, especially what we have said or why, for instance, in conversation, which can be very tricky. Finally, we say something and think, "Why did we say that?" In retrospect we might know.

Writers don't want to appear to be stupid. I don't know - maybe people become writers so that they can prove that they're not. Of course getting a book published doesn't mean that they're not stupid. At a certain point you have to stop trying to prove something and write because you need to think about something and want to communicate, in a very broad sense.

It wasn't that I wanted to be an artist. But when I took my first drawing class with the painter Doug Ohlson, I could never finish a drawing.

I think many writers really believe that being published is a traumatic experience.