Getting inside your character's head and letting the reader see the world through not just their eyes but their sensibility creates an intimacy that can't be duplicated in any other medium.

When I'm writing, I try to have the mask of my character on as I'm walking through the world. When I'm not at my desk, the rest of the time, I try to stay in that character and see the world the way that character would It's almost like method acting in a way — keeping the character close the way the actor keeps a script close and always tries to be in character.

Saul Bellow once said, 'A writer is a reader who has moved to emulation' — which I think is true. I just started writing and made that jump from reader to writer and learned how hard it was, but also how much fun it was — losing myself in these imaginary worlds.

You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole--like the world, or the person you loved.

The sins of the Midwest: flatness, emptiness, a necessary acceptance of the familiar. Where is the romance in being buried alive? In growing old?

It is not brilliance or facility that is necessary, but the determination to bear and even enjoy the dull process of wading into one's own bad prose again, and one more time, and then once again, with the utmost concentration and taste, looking for opportunities to mine deeper.

The happiest she'd ever been was with him, and the saddest. Was that the true test of love?