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I spend half my time just living my life, and the other half analyzing it.

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

You can divide my life into two.

When I was about to turn 50, I went into a kind of personal revision and observed my own priorities and what led those priorities in my life. And many things that, in a way, were profound.

Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times.

One half of my life has put the other half in the grave.

Finding pleasure in revision is the thing I would most strongly advise to people. It's not something I did as a younger writer; I learned it over time.

I'm a passionate believer in revision, and a lot of my writing gets done during revision process. It isn't just tweaking: I tend to break it apart and remake it every time I do a new draft.

I always said life consists of love and work. I tried to balance it 50-50. And, of course, now I'm so happy I did.

You may be sick of what you did the first half of your life, but you don't have to just walk around and play golf or doing nothing. It's not like fifty is the new thirty. It's like fifty is the new chapter.