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Often you find the character through the things they say. How they talk about other people, how they describe themselves - which is very rare.

I try to talk about things I know about. But my characters are more of a combination of people or how I imagine people would feel.

Some characters think more like me than others; some think more like my dad or someone else. It certainly is made up of my experiences, things I've heard, things I think are funny, things I think are sad. There's sort of a strange, blurry version of yourself in there.

I see people in terms of dialogue and I believe that people are their talk.

I express things through characters because I have a fear that my own voice is irritating because that's been said to me.

The properties of people and the properties of character have almost nothing to do with each other. They really don't. I know it seems like they do because we look alike, but people don't speak in dialogue. Their lives don't unfold in a series of scenes that form a narrative arc.

Sometimes you find your voice by trying to write like people, and sometimes you find it by trying to write unlike people.

When you write, you hear the characters speaking to you as you take dictation from what they say. And obviously, they had particular personalities when you hear them.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

People are so afraid to talk about real things, but they're experiences that everyone goes through.