Writers spend three years rearranging 26 letters of the alphabet. It's enough to make you lose your mind day by day

If I can tell you the story from beginning to end in five minutes, I'm ready to start writing.

In a given scene I may know nothing more than how it's supposed to end, most of the time not even that. Scenes are improvised. A character does or says something, and with as much spontaneity and schizophrenia as I can muster, another character responds. In this way, everything I write is spontaneous chain reaction and I'm running around playing leapfrog in my brain trying to "be" all my people.

Beat him, eat him and get out.

You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road.

I write because I can't imagine not writing.

The bigger the issue, the smaller you write. Remember that. You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying on the road. You pick the smallest manageable part of the big thing, and you work off the resonance.