I think the slowness of exchange is over, and the idea of waiting for a response - that's gone. People don't want to wait. It's all this instantaneity. That's fine. But it also makes writing different, if you're writing for an instant exchange compared with being able to have time for more reflection.

Nothing is a matter of age. It's really in the person because you can publish book after book after book and still want that golden apple. And maybe it's the reality principle that has hit me. I believe that a career is very different from writing. My career is a certain kind of career.

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

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

You have to create the space for the possibility of people speaking as they do. If writing is supposed to lead us in any way or educate or suggest other ways of being, it can't do so by simply reflecting what's considered to be realistic.

Do the obvious, you won't forget it. Do the obvious, you won't regret it. Obvious, obvious, obvious.

You learn to read in kindergarten or first grade, and suddenly there's this other world that isn't your family or your school or your friends. It's something else.