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When I'm writing, my neural pathways get blocked. I can't read. I can barely hold a conversation without forgetting words and names. I wish I could wear the same clothes and eat the same food each day.

When things are going well, I can't write fast enough to keep up with my mind. Writing walks, speech runs and talk flies. Other times, though, it's like fishing.

When you're writing there's a deep, deep level of concentration way below your normal self. This strange voice, these strange sentences come out of you.

What it takes is to actually write: not to think about it, not to imagine it, not to talk about it, but to actually want to sit down and write. I'm lucky I learned that habit a really long time ago. I credit my mother with that. She was an English teacher, but she was a writer.

I've never tried to define my states of mind when I write.

I never think at all when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well.

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

When I'm writing, I'm in an isolation chamber. I'm not one to think about that outside world stuff when I'm writing.

My brain doesn't like to be quiet.