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There are so many different things out there trying to hook our attention, we writers have to be very selective and make certain that it is coming from inside out, not outside in.

Writers are socially observant. We find people endlessly fascinating, and real life is mysterious. Sometimes it's hard to stop staring at the strut and squawk of my fellow man. They can be quite inspiring. Sometimes it's hard to stop talking to them to see what in the world they're thinking.

I don't ask writers about their work habits. I really don't care.

Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response.

Writers are outsiders. Even when we seem like insiders, we're outsiders. We have to be. Our noses pressed to the glass, we notice everything. We mull and interpret. We store away clues, details that may be useful to us later.

I think most writers feel like they're on the outside looking in much of the time. All of us feel, to a certain extent, alienated from the stuff going on around us.

If you look at the body of any writers' work, you can figure out the questions that animate them. I think that is what real writers do. They don't tell people how to live or what to think. They write in order to try to answer their own deepest questions.

For writers and artists, it's always a balancing act between wanting to be the center of attention and wanting to be invisible and watch what's going on.

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

I think all writers write from the time they're really young, and you just start asking the question, 'What if?'