I tend to write in the mornings.

I really do believe that chance favours a prepared mind. Wallace Stegner, who was one of my teachers when I was at Stanford, preached that writing a novel is not something that can be done in a sprint. That it's a marathon. You have to pace yourself. He himself wrote two pages every day and gave himself a day off at Christmas. His argument was at the end of a year, no matter what, you'd got 700 pages and that there's got to be something worth keeping.

The truth of the matter is that the people who succeed in the arts most often are the people who get up again after getting knocked down. Persistence is critical.

The law, for all its failings, has a noble goal - to make the little bit of life that people can actually control more just. We can't end disease or natural disasters, but we can devise rules for our dealings with one another that fairly weigh the rights and needs of everyone, and which, therefore, reflect our best vision of ourselves.

I adore the company of other writers because they are so often lively minds and, frequently, blazingly funny. And of course, we get each other in a unique way.

I am a law student in my first year at the law, and there are many moments when I am simply a mess.

That led me to say that when push comes to shove, I'm against capital punishment.