As I have encountered difficult moments in my own life, I have been privileged to learn from the great men I have come to know as a writer.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I feel in some ways I've had a difficult life. And it makes me the kind of writer I am, in what I value, what I respect, what I hold dear.
It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
One of the things I learned from my father, and it did not serve me well at all, was that he was a successful writer, he earned a living. And it was a shock for me to find out that it was actually hard to make a living as a writer.
I don't know any writer for whom it comes easily. Maybe John Updike - a story would just seem to come to him whole, you know, out of a personal experience. But the rest of us, I think, are not so lucky, and I had to work hard, yeah.
I am writing more than I have ever done. My life has come back to me in the most extraordinary way.
Three of my novels and a good number of my short stories are told from the point of view of men. I was brought up in a house of women.
Working with great writers can be humbling and frightening, but it can also change you for good, forever.
If I'd learned nothing else, it was this: If you want to be a great writer, be a man. If you can't be a man, write like one.
However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.
You have to remember that I was a bright but simple fellow from Canada who seldom, if ever, met another writer, and then only a so-called literary type that occasionally sold a story and meanwhile worked in an office for a living.