"In the back of my mind was the constant hankering, almost yearning, to write but something always stopped me in my tracks. Or if I did find my way to put a pen to paper or finger on a keyboard I'd give up after a few minutes. I'd find other things to do: Anything but writing."

"It was not uncommon for the children to be told they were being treated this way because it was their bad karma and they must have hurt a child in a past life."

"For a long period in my life - it lasted about 10 years - I had writer's block."

"I was a new devotee of Eastern mysticism and even though I did not join that particular group, I could well have done. They seemed a bit extreme but I regarded myself as not quite ready."

"I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin."

"I always take a story that's kind of out there, like an urban myth. I take some possibility that people imagine, that they are familiar with, and try to turn it into a story."

"Writing fiction, there are no limits to what you write as long as it increases the value of the paper you are writing on."

"I have read your book and much like it."