If a novel or a story works, you don't stop thinking about it; it doesn't truly end.

I revise and revise and revise. I'm not even sure "revise" is the right word. I work a story almost to death before it's done.

I've spent a lot of time in prisons, first doing legal work and later, teaching.

We don't want emotion handed to us - that's not emotion. You have to build and come from the reader's soul.

My characters tend to be people who are looking back on a life lived, their joys, their regrets.

To me, and I'm sure for other writers, too, characters come back and they relive again, but what about those characters who only live for a page or two? Or for five pages or 10 pages. I like to think they're still out there - still living - but for me they kind of die, too. It's kind of sad. I don't think about them anymore unless I give them life again.

I sometimes wonder if our memories are a myth. We think we remember, but we are remembering the story and not the actual event?