Every writer's difficult journey is a movement from silence to speech. We must be intensely private and interior in order to find a voice and a vision - and we must bring our work to an outside world where the market, or public outrage, or even government censorship can destroy our voice.

I believe that to create real-seeming characters, the writer must be willing to go on a voyage of self-exploration. It can be revealing and even painful to explore your own weakness, but it gives you genuine emotion. Characters in fiction come alive because of the believability of their emotional lives and that is what I strive to create.

Capo, my first golden retriever, so loved to swim she once jumped off a cliff to get into Lake Superior.

Organizer is kind of a grand term for what I was doing.

Sometimes I think I'm a one-trick pony because I'm not very inventive about new ways of telling stories.

Live disasters are wonderful attractions when you're safe on the other side of them.

Rule number something or other -- never tell anybody anything unless you're going to get something better in return.