I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.

I don’t ask writers about their work habits. I really don’t care. Joyce Carol Oates says somewhere that when writers ask each other what time they start working and when they finish and how much time they take for lunch, they’re actually trying to find out, "Is he as crazy as I am?" I don’t need that question answered.

Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.

The book really comes to life in the rewriting.

When I was a child... I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, 'Momma, do we believe in winter?'

People are unjust to anger - it can be enlivening and a lot of fun.

I think you're a wonder. You're beautiful. You're mature. You are, I admit, vastly more experienced than I am. That's what threw me. I was thrown. Forgive me.