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Fiction works when it makes a reader feel something strongly.

The thing is, emotion - if it's visibly felt by the writer - will go through all the processes it takes to publish a story and still hit the reader right in the gut. But you have to really mean it.

I think in our time, you know, so much of the information we get is pre-polarized. Fiction has a way of reminding us that we actually are very similar in our emotions and our neurology and our desires and our fears, so I think it's a nice way to neutralize that polarization.

Fiction is socially meaningful.

One of the things about writing fiction is that you create people that you feel, more or less, as though you know.

There's always a bit of fiction in everything that I write.

One reason we love fiction is because stories have a comforting shape. They provide a resolution that's lacking in our regular lives.

Writing is such a solitary thing, so it's nice, when I'm discouraged, to see people still have such faith in fiction.

I always squirm when I read what's called 'creative nonfiction,' and the writer is lobbing gobs of emotion and language at the world, hoping some of it will stick.

Most fiction comes from your experience.