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In a novel, I could submerge my ego in a character's and let his perceptions take over.

Usually, autobiography is such an indulgence of the ego.

I'm not over-enamored of complicated books, and wonder if it's more for the author's ego than anything else?

Good writers are often excellent at a hundred other things, but writing promises a greater latitude for the ego.

When you're writing personal stories, you have to be totally uncompromising - to the extent that you can be - about yourself. I know that if I am uber-uncompromising with myself, that gives me some latitude to write about others.

I think the hardest stories we tell are always the ones about ourselves. And as a journalist, I was taught that I'm never supposed to put myself in the story. So I spent what, 11, 12 years of my life writing about other people so I don't have to face my own life.

The minute I ever start thinking about what a character would do is the minute I bring my ego into play. It's the minute I'm putting a judgment on something.

As a writer, it's a great narrative tool to have that character who is slightly detached but at the same time observant of his reality, because I think that's pretty much what being a writer is - being there, watching and internalizing.

Ego is a social fiction for which one person at a time gets all the blame.

In general, when I'm writing, I concentrate on the story itself, and I leave it to other people, such as agents and publishers, to work out who it's for.