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Reading 'Youth in Revolt' might have ruined my career because suddenly I wanted to abandon all the emotional truth of something and just go out far on a literary limb with completely implausible things that relied completely on voice and humor. And what saved me is realizing that I couldn't do that very well.

I went to graduate school with zero expectation. I kind of backed into it. I wanted to go back to school because I felt gaps in my literary background. I studied mostly twentieth-century English literature in college, so I thought, 'Maybe I'll go back for my writing.'

I was totally absorbed in the real world, the politics, the history, the news, and I just couldn't find my way into the fictional world... When I finally could return to writing the novel, it was in fits and starts.

By the time I was twenty-three, I'd given up any thought of becoming a fiction writer, and I didn't return to the craft for over two decades. But, at the age of forty-five, return I did.

My love of literature goes back to my childhood.

The great break of my literary career was going to law school.

I became a writer in spite of my environments.

I began my writing career in a very isolated place and time.

It took me a long time to even dare to envision myself as a writer. I was very uncertain and hesitant and afraid to pursue a creative life.

As a child, I loved story books and wanted to be in them so desperately and live the stories.