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The things I write about are completely removed from my own life, but people want to know the characters better.

All of my characters are a little bit based on people I know in real life. You know when you do that you have to change the character a little bit in case your friend or your relative reads the book, because you don't want them to know you wrote about them... They might get mad.

The characters I'm most emotionally involved with are like friends you leave behind when you move away. You don't see them regularly anymore, but you still love them and keep in touch.

I find my characters and stories in many varied places; sometimes they pop out of newspaper articles, obscure historical texts, lively dinner party conversations and some even crawl out of the dusty remote recesses of my imagination.

I usually grow sick of my short-story characters and think, 'I never want to see you again.'

I'm not one of these 'the characters write themselves; the story just fell out of me' kind of writers. Wish it was like that.

I get very involved in my characters. Sometimes I have a very hard time separating my characters from my life.

In real life, people are constantly saying one thing and doing another, but if you write your characters that way, the story becomes too hard to follow.

Part of me becomes the characters I'm writing about. I think readers feel like they are there, the way I am, as a result.

Once you have your characters, they tell you what to write, you don't tell them.