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Then, of course, there are those sad occasions when a poet or a writer has not grown, and one has to let them go because they're just not making headway. But we have a very clear personal relationship with the authors.

I don't lead a writer's life. And I think that can be a source of suspicion and irritation to some people.

There's always this sense of incredulity that writers feel, because they're usually living flat and ordinary lives, because they have to.

A writer who isn't writing is asking for trouble.

Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.

You know you lose a lot of social skills if you're a writer. You spend too long alone. And its forced me to address that.

It's always struck me as unfair that writing has so little sensation when it's going well.

A writer is always, always searching, even against her will, against all her better instincts, for the thread of a story. Everything is fodder. Everything is fuel. You can feel it coming on like the tingling of a sore throat. The brain never stops struggling to reshape every experience and feeling into a coherent narrative.

I think writers tend to be experience junkies, and I think they also tend to want to be on the outside looking in.

Writing is, by its nature, interior work. So being forced to be around people is a great gift for a novelist. You get to be reminded, daily, of how people think, how they speak, how they live; the things they worry about, the things they hope for, the things they fear.