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I keep all of my letters, postcards, and thank you notes. I'll keep them forever!

Sometimes a line enters your head, and you're so grateful for it. You go online to check to see if anyone wrote it before you. You must have stolen it.

Tonight I should like to thank all those who have shared my work and to acknowledge the debt that I owe to my wife whose encouragement to put research before all other things has been a great strength to me.

I don't know what the instinct is, to save every report card, every half-sentence scribbled note, but my mother did it pretty effectively, and I've done it to a fare-thee-well.

Write something every single day, even if it's just three lines. And it doesn't matter if it's any good - just write something every day.

My job is to form the people, the story, the sentences. Every reader will bring their own life and their own history to the story and shape it accordingly. I guess you can say it's like I am sending them a letter.

I write all year long, and at the end of the year I pull these forty or fifty things out and say, 'Which of these things do I want to record?'

Were I more conversant with literature and its great names, I could go on quoting them ad infinitum and acknowledge my debt for the merit you have been generous enough to find in my work.

I get a lot of letters from people.

By the time I sit down ready to write, I've done a lot of longhand and a lot of note collecting along the way.