Quote

I write a lot about other people, like family and friends. I look at their lives and relationships and think, 'Well, if I was in your position, this is how I would see it.'

I seem to have a natural tendency to want to share my own observations and feelings with other people, and writing seems to be the way I'm best equipped to do that.

I write a lot about disadvantaged people, particularly vulnerable children, because I feel that that's who I was. That is familiar terrain for me. And I try to write about things that are very close to me because I want people to feel the passion that I have for the subject.

It's way easier to write for other people. Yourself isn't in it. When you write for yourself, you overthink, and you become paranoid. When you write for others, it isn't about you.

If you write something that's personal, there's going to be elements of yourself in it.

Mostly I'm writing about people, so I feel constrained to take with me my view of people, my curiosity about how people choose the things they do and why they come to certain decisions in a certain fashion and all the things that drive most writers.

When you start writing about the stuff that is the central experience of your own life, you can talk about whatever you want, in whatever way you want.

I'm finding things out about myself as a person - as a writer - as I write, and so are the people who listen to what I do. But they have this additional aspect of how they take the stuff that I do, and so it broadens the work, and it creates this strange connection.

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.

When you write, no matter what, it ends up personal.