"It's just so much fun to make up characters, situations, and everything else about a story. I have so much freedom and flexibility to do whatever I want."

"The deadlines are much, much longer with books. When I was a reporter, a lot of times I'd come in at 8:30 a.m., get an assignment right away, interview somebody, turn the story in by 9:30, and have the finished story in the paper that landed on my desk by noon."

"I started trying to write when I was in second or third grade."

"Sometimes I can spend as long revising a manuscript as I spent writing it in the first place."

"A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading."

"You hear the best stories from ordinary people. That sense of immediacy is more real to me than a lot of writerly, literary-type crafted stories. I want that immediacy when I read a novel."

"Everything has the potential to be extraordinary, whether an old photograph, a book or a life. If you find it ordinary, you simply need to take a closer look."

"I've never been a fast reader. I'm fickle; I don't finish books I start; I put a book aside for five, ten years and then take it up again."