I write when I have something to say and not when I don't. My time is better spent if I know I have nothing to say. I don't consider it writer's block; I just don't have anything to say.

Maybe my work is somewhat divided into family stories, things I know intimately, and then everybody else in the world - the strangers who I am totally fascinated with.

I beat a story to within an inch of its life - that's when I know its done. Not before, not after.

I'm constantly trying to figure out how to crack that mystery; how to make a novel that has a sense of immediacy of a short story. I try to do that and I'll try it again, but I'll never get it.

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

I think some writers should wait for something to say.

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