I don't believe a picture is worth a thousand words, unless they're very confusing words.

I don't know what a natural thought process is.

What I don't like about teaching is hearing myself say the same thing. I mean, you just want to sort of shoot yourself after a while. But you don't have a million different ways of thinking about what you have been thinking about for many years. And then there's the truism that you're only as good as your students. If they're not into what's going on, it doesn't matter who you are.

Reading gave me great comfort and pleasure. When I started being able to write, around seven or eight, I wanted to be able to do that myself, to create that other world.

As a reader myself, which precedes my being a writer, of course, I read in order to enter another world.

A book coming out into the world can be a harsh, harsh time. And your feelings are on the line. Everything that publication is about is really not what your writing is about. Your writing is coming out of something else, and publication and being in the public are something else. And those of us who have published, in whatever way we're published, are very fortunate.

I do think we think repetitively. It's so hard to get certain thoughts out of your head. If you're angry at a friend, you're going to keep going back to that conversation.