You can be interested in a Jane Smiley novel whether or not anyone says a word. She enters into her characters thoughts with great understanding and depth.

Not everyone writes well from a child's point of view.

Whatever you're working on, take small bites. The task will not be overwhelming if you can reduce it to its smallest component.

People sometimes get in the habit of being loyal to a mistake.

One of the odd things about middle age, he concluded, was the strange decisions a man discovers he's made by not really making them, like allowing friends to drift away through simple neglect.

I think the darker aspect of my fiction-or anybody's fiction-is by its very nature somehow easier to talk about.

It's possible to overlook character flaws of in-laws for the simple reason that you feel neither responsible for them nor genetically implicated.