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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.

I hope the wonder of what happens to my characters never goes away. That yearning keeps me writing.

And the nice thing about writing a novel is you take your time, you sit with the character sometimes nine years, you look very deeply at a situation, unlike in real life when we just kind of snap something out.

I'm constantly being surprised and finding unplanned things - because the writing is a process of experiencing things on the ground with the characters.

I guess that in a lot of ways, my writing is more of a character to me than something that I feel personally attached to.

My writing comes not from the happy moments, but from struggle and grief.

I don't do all that well in the writerly world. I'm happier being outside the flow.

Generally, I think most of my writing tends to have some kind of magical element to it. That's the way I can access the emotional life of the character.

I just sort of write the book I feel like writing given the emotional place I am in my life at the time.