It's not the writer who determines how good she is anyway. Writers don't determine that. It's readers who determine that.

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

Being in Europe had helped me unlearn some of what I'd been taught or unconsciously believed.

Without curiosity a writer is dead.

I think about material that could work in the novel or story as I'm writing. I see if I can get there through what's happening with the character. But it's by inclination. It's not "At this moment this will happen." Usually with my characters you can't tell what has induced them to do anything. That's because, from my understanding of reality - which is always subjective - everything is overdetermined.

You know how some people are upwardly mobile? I'm sort of downwardly mobile in the publishing world, because of my sales figures and also because of the kind of books I write. Everything really counts on sales. I started out with a bigger press, my first few books. But I've always done some things with independent and small presses and small magazines and I always will.

I think the major device for me is that narrator's voice. I'm always trying to find a different kind of form to tell whatever story it is, and I wish that weren't so, because it drives me crazy.